Stephen Ardrey, Sex Trafficking, Rhode Island 2013

Related Federal Cases

Sex Trafficking: Missouri Man Faces Life in Prison · Rhode Island
Sex Trafficking Suspect Ordered Detained · Massachusetts
Proud Boy Cuney Gets 87 Months for ‘Ghost Gun’ Arsenal · Arizona
Hernandez-Velazquez Gets 15+ Years for Brutal Sex Trafficking · Mississippi
Buffalos Gang Members Nabbed in Child Sex Trafficking · Massachusetts

Table of Contents

Missouri Man Gets 14 Years for Sex Trafficking

Provided by the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Rhode Island

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Stephen Ardrey, 30, of Springfield, Mo., was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Providence today to 14 years in federal prison for transporting a 17-year-old female from the Boston area into Rhode Island with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity…

Ardrey was arrested on September 12, 2013, while walking with the victim along a Coventry, R.I., highway three days after the victim was reported missing from her Medfield, Mass., home.

According to information presented to the court, Ardrey met the victim in an online chat room in December 2012. Over time, communications with the victim online, via email and through an online service called ‘TextNow’ intensified in frequency and became sexually explicit.

The court was told that Ardrey and the victim traveled by train from Boston to Providence and then by taxi to a West Greenwich, R.I., motel. The next day Ardrey posted an advertisement on backpage.com and other websites that displayed provocative photographs of the victim under a banner that read ‘Sweet girl next door -19’.

Ardrey pleaded guilty on February 26, 2014, to one count each of trafficking a person under the age of 18 and transportation of a minor with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct.

United States Attorney Peter F. Neronha commented, “The message from today’s sentencing is simple: if you engage in human trafficking, if you engage in sex trafficking in this state, we are going to get our victim to a safe place and then we are going to come after you with all of our resources.”

Ardrey was also ordered to serve a term of 10 years supervised release upon completion of his incarceration and that he register as a sex offender.