Feds charge 3 in Ohio slavery case
A mentally disabled woman and her daughter were held in an Ohio apartment for two years, forced to perform manual labor and threatened with dogs and snakes to keep them compliant, federal authorities said Tuesday.
The people accused of holding the woman and child captive in the Ashland, Ohio, apartment collected the woman's government benefits and beat her in order to get painkillers for themselves, federal prosecutors announced. The suspects -- 26-year-old Jordie Callahan, 31-year-old Jessica Hunt and 33-year-old Daniel Brown -- are charged with forced labor, with Callahan facing an additional count of witness tampering, the U.S. attorney's office in Cleveland said in a statement detailing the allegations.
The apartment was home to "numerous" pit bulls and reptiles, including pythons and a venomous coral snake, which the woman's captors used to keep her in line, prosecutors said. They said her situation was discovered in October when the woman, identified only as "S.E.," was arrested for trying to steal a candy bar and asked to be taken to jail.
Ashland is about 60 miles south of Cleveland, where three women were rescued in May from the home of a man police said had held them captive for about a decade. In this case, the woman federal prosecutors identified as the victim had originally been arrested on a state child-welfare charge as part of the case, Ashland Police Chief David Marcelli told CNN.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/18/us/ohio-captive-woman/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
