A 44-year-old father of two solicited sex from an underage transgender minor on craigslist.
And on Monday he was sentenced to five years in prison for pandering, the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office said Tuesday.
Following his release from prison, Mr. Eric Stovall will have to serve an additional 10 years on probation, the district attorney’s spokesman Mr. Andrew Agan said. He will also be required to register as a sex offender.
The Douglas County Sherriff’s Office were investigating two other men for human trafficking when they came across e-mails from Mr. Stovall responding to Craigslist advertisements for sexual services.
The other two men, Mr. Steven Lemery and Mr. Christopher Lynch, were convicted last year of operating a human trafficking ring outside Mr. Lemery’s Douglasville home.
Mr. Lynch received a 30-year sentence, 14 years of which he will have to serve in custody, after pleading guilty to pimping a victim under the age of 18, sexual exploitation of children and pandering.
Mr. Lemery was sentenced to 80 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of human trafficking, aggravated child molestation, pandering and enticing a child for indecent purposes.
“People like Mr. Stovall are the reason this victim was in the position he was in,” Assistant District Attorney Ms. Rachel Ackley said. “Without people paying for these services, the two defendants would not have a business.”
Mr. Lynch and Mr. Lemery forced teenage males as young as 15-years-old to have sex with clients who had responded to their advertisements. And one of those clients was Mr. Stovall, Mr. Agan said.
For a two-month stretch in 2010, Mr. Stovall replied to prostitution advertisements placed on Craigslist, Mr. Agan said.
The e-mails, which were discovered by Investigator Jay Hayes, revealed negotiations between Lynch and Mr. Stovall that centered around the sexual services of a minor.
In the e-mails, Mr. Stovall discussed the price for the services and provided turn-by-turn directions to his house on Robinwood Trail in Douglasville.
Those turn-by-turn directions led Inv. Hayes straight to the front door of Mr. Stovall, the only adult living at the residence.
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