Man charged with forcing woman into sex work while he was jailed in Utah
Published at
Collin Leonard, KSL.com
HURRICANE, Utah (KSL.com) — A Louisiana man was indicted on federal charges after prosecutors allege he coerced a woman into commercial sex work while incarcerated in southern Utah.
Aaron Charles Edward Kern, 27, was indicted on one count of sex trafficking on March 11 and appeared in court on Monday to hear the allegations against him.
“Over the course of hundreds of recorded jail calls, tablet visits, and messages, Kern recruited (the victim) to engage in commercial sex acts and provide him with a large portion of the proceeds as well as smuggle suboxone into the correctional facility where he was housed,” a motion for detention states.
Kearn was jailed in Washington County in December 2024 on charges of drug distribution, a first-degree felony; human trafficking for sexual exploitation, a second-degree felony; and harassment, a class B misdemeanor. Those charges, filed in 5th District Court, are no longer listed.
Investigators recovered recordings of phone calls from November 2023 to December 2024, online sex work advertisements that Kern dictated to the victim, handwritten contract notes and journal entries showing that the man was threatening the victim and her family in order to exploit money out of her, court documents show.
One journal entry reads: “How do I break you without also breaking your spirit. … When will you learn your place?” according to the detention motion.
Prosecutors say the entry continues with Kern describing “that he needed to break (the woman) down completely before he could ‘rebuild’ her into the prostitute he needed and concluded: ‘I apologize for it will hurt and I will be the one to wield the pain but it is the second step and a most important one required to build a boss out of you.'”
In the motion, Kern is alleged to have threatened the woman during phone calls, saying, “You are going to have a lot of days where you are drinking through a straw.” The man is accused of threatening her family members too, allegedly saying, “The next time you hear from me, I will be on your brother’s doorstep, your auntie’s doorstep,” before listing addresses.
He threatened the woman’s child in one phone call, according to the motion, saying, “I guarantee you, you not going nowhere. You owe me too much money. We can be in a relationship, or we can make this strictly about money. Either way, I don’t care. … I promise you, you will never see your son before I don’t get my money back.”
Kern, a member of the Gangster Disciples gang, according to court documents, said the woman “could pay her way out of her contract with $50,000.”
Kern tried to contact the victim, sending a postcard to her mother “with statements about forgiving each other,” a probable cause affidavit shows, after learning of the federal involvement in the investigation. Kearn pleaded guilty to violating a protective order and was given an additional month in jail.
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