On February 11, Samuel Friday and Morris Reese, two men in their mid-60’s from Tyrone, Pennsylvania, appeared in court for scheduled preliminary hearings on charges stemming from their alleged involvement in a child sexual exploitation ring. Both men were charged with multiple felony counts of sexual abuse of children, trafficking in minors, and patronizing a victim of sexual servitude, while Reese also faces felony sexual assault and statutory sexual assault charges.
State police arrested both men in November after receiving several referrals claiming that victims and witnesses came forward against Friday. Soon after, Friday allegedly admitted to taking nude photos of and engaging in sexual conduct with one female minor victim, according to state police.
Friday and Reese are two of the four defendants in the case, in which prosecutors allege Friday was the alleged ringleader. The other co-defendants, also in their 60’s, James Kobuck and Michael H. Woomer, facecharges for child sexual abuse and engaging in a commercial sex act with a minor. The case is now headed to trial.
According to prosecutors and alleged victims, all four men reportedly paid and filmed minor victims to perform sexual acts in Friday’s basement. Detectives seized thousands of photos and videos from Friday’s homedepicting children being sexually abused by the men, including some from the 1990’s. Centre County Assistant District Attorney Joshua Andrews reported that the investigation is ongoing, as authorities have only reviewed about 20% of the videos found in Friday’s home.
Two sisters, now adults, came forward shortly after Friday’s arrest, claiming that he approached them when they were teenagers and brought them back to his house. One sister explained that they were “at a real low…lost and… vulnerable” when Friday purportedly began sexually exploiting them. Additionally, one victim reported that her mother gave her to Friday to sexually exploit her when she was 12 to 14 years old.
At Reese’s hearing, one victim reportedly stated that she has known both Reese and Friday since she was 5 years old and that Friday began to sexually exploit her when she was 14 years old in exchange for money. The victim further testified that she later brought her friend to Friday’s home at his request. The friend testified she visited Friday’s home a total of 5 times, each time receiving cash in exchange for sex.
At Woomer’s hearing, a victim testified that she lived with Friday various times throughout the past 3 years after being placed there by children and youth services. The victim, now 18 years old, testified she felt “pressured” to engage in the sexual acts with Friday and Woomer, and that Friday had allegedly told Woomer she was in her 20s.
Under Pennsylvania law, an individual is guilty of trafficking if they recruit, entice, harbor, transport, provide, obtain, advertise, maintain, patronize, or solicit a person who is subject to sexual servitude through the means of force, fraud, or coercion. Because minors cannot legally consent to being bought and sold for sex, the crime of sex trafficking of a child does not require the elements of force, fraud, or coercion. Therefore, the allegations that the victims in this case “voluntarily” complied with the defendants’ requests for sex acts are irrelevant because they were minors.
Pennsylvania law allows a mistake of age defense for certain crimes against minors, such as statutory sexual assault. However, this defense is explicitly prohibited for sexual abuse of children and patronizing a victim of sexual servitude, the two crimes with which Woomer and Kobuck were charged. At Woomer’s preliminary hearing, his defense attorney unsuccessfully attempted to use the mistake of age defense to convince the judge to drop his charges.
The inherent control and authority that adults hold over children make children especially vulnerable to sexual exploitation. In approximately 90% of sexual abuse cases and nearly half of trafficking cases, the perpetrator is someone the child knows and trusts. Here, one victim has purportedly known Friday since she was 5 years old, and another victim’s own mother allegedly trafficked her to Friday. According to the allegations, Friday took advantage of this longstanding relationship and power imbalance, where the victim likely trusted him and felt pressured to comply. The mother took advantage of her relationship with her daughter and betrayed her duty to protect her. These relationships that existed prior to the alleged abuse likely contributed to the defendants’ alleged crimes going unreported for so many years, as victims are often afraid of the consequences of reporting someone close to them.
The CSE Institute applauds the efforts of the Centre County District Attorney’s Office, as well as the Centre County Police Department and the State Police for their combined efforts in investigating and properly charging the trafficker and sex buyers in this case. We also commend the victims and witnesses who came forward in this case, as their courage likely prevented future harm to other potential victims.
The CSE Institute will continue to provide updates on this matter.
All views expressed herein are personal to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law or of Villanova University.