People living nearby had to know something illegal—something evil—was going on. They would have seen young girls going in and out of the middle-class home on Disston Street in Oxford Circle.
Yet until one young trafficked, addicted woman went to police for help in 2021, no one did or said a thing about it.
Finally, authorities cracked down and Jones and 21 other people—including drivers and clients—were arrested, including Jones’ own daughter, Natoria, 29, who acted as finance manager for the profitable operation.
The family that preys together stays together, right?
And prey this family did—prey on their victims, who were mostly helpless young women with substance abuse problems. Addicts, desperately looking for money for their next fix, would stumble upon online sites called “Girlfriend Experience,” “GFE” or “Girlfriends” looking for a job. They would call and speak to someone they believed to be a woman named “Julie.”
“These are crimes that all of you know often occur in the dark.”
In reality, this was Jones, police say, who would alter his voice to appear to be a woman. He often would rape the women as part of their “job interview” process, and would send drivers to take them to “dates” with paying clients.
Jones would commonly provide drugs to the women, whose desperation enslaved them to Jones’ “business.”
The whole process was designed to break their spirits from the start.
And for 12 years, no one said or did a thing to stop it.
“I can’t imagine somebody wouldn’t have put a finger on it,” Joan Sutton, a neighbor, said. “A person would have called it in and said, ‘I think something is going on here. Not sure what it is, but…’”
But no one did. Apparently, no one noticed—or no one cared.
“These are crimes that all of you know often occur in the dark,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry said. “The conduct in this case is disturbing. It is cruel and it is callous. Terrance Jones and his co-conspirators took advantage of young, vulnerable women and exploited their suffering to line their own pockets.
“As all human traffickers do, he dehumanized these young women and used them as a commodity to further his trafficking enterprise.
“By presenting himself as a woman, coupled with the victims’ inability to make informed decisions while intoxicated, Jones was able to lure and trap easily manipulated women into his scheme and make money using their bodies for sex,” she said.
Is this at all believable? Can this even be possible?
Sex trafficking is nothing new, but it is netting brutal and manipulative pimps $170 billion per year.
Are we not our brother’s or sister’s keepers?
The year 2023 set a new record for the number of sex trafficking incidents in the US—3,117 cases, or more than double the amount from 2019.
Jones is charged with running corrupt organizations, trafficking in individuals, involuntary servitude, criminal conspiracy and other related offenses. His bail was set at $2 million.
So justice, of a sort, is finally being done. But why did it take so long?
These young women—no one really knows how many—that Jones, his daughter and co-conspirators were free to victimize for so many years were mostly in their 20s. They were, according to police, manipulated or forced to have sex with a never-ending flow of strangers and collected money and drugs for doing it.
It was a highly productive operation. In just 10 days in 2023, Jones is said to have arranged a shocking 78 “dates” for the women under his control.
“He made these women feel worthless,” Henry said. “He controlled them, manipulated them and, in a way, programmed them to feel like this was their only option.”
There’s no question that Jones is a despicable, soulless pimp with no morality or humanity in him, but what does this case say about the rest of us? Are we not our brother’s or sister’s keepers? Did these women’s low social status as addicts and willing or unwilling prostitutes keep us from wanting to help them escape their lives of manipulation and misery?
Did we not think they deserved saving?
We each have a responsibility to improve the condition first of ourselves, then of our families, communities, societies and countries.
This case and so many others like it show us that it is time to open our eyes, step up, stand up and be the caring, better people we know we can be.
To be fully human, we must.
