NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A married couple, who utilized the foster care system to sex traffic young women into prostitution, was charged with multiple counts of sex trafficking in the State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Wednesday.
The couple, 38-year-old Kareem Mitchell and 51-year-old Sharice Mitchell, allegedly managed a sex trafficking operation where the couple brought in at least eight women, with at least two of them being Sharice Mitchell’s foster children.
Both of the Mitchells pleaded not guilty to the sex trafficking charges as well as a fourth-degree conspiracy charge.
According to prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Kareem Mitchell is a registered sex offender who ran the sex trafficking ring from Nov. 2018 to Feb. 2022. He used social media to recruit women and then coerced them into prostitution through physical and verbal abuse.
Authorities said the women were taken to cars and hotels in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx to prostitute.
Prosecutors said none of the women were under 18 with only the ages of one of the women specified as being 24.
Kareem Mitchell faced similar charges in 2008 when he was convicted of transporting a minor to engage in prostitution.
For Sharice Mitchell’s part, two of the women were placed in her Bronx home through foster care and within a month, one of their pictures showed up on an online prostitution advertisement, according to assistant district attorney Lauren Breen.
Breen added in the courtroom that Sharice Mitchell lied about being separated from her husband and that her home was free of people with criminal records, despite her husband’s sex offender registration listing the same address as his wife.
Kareem Mitchell is being held without bail while his wife’s bail was set at $500,000 cash, $1.5 million insurance company bond and $2 million partially secured bond.
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