Man with home dungeon sentenced for trying to buy sex slave
A Mesa, Ariz., man accused of trying to buy a sex slave for $4,000 to keep in a home dungeon he allegedly was building has been sentenced to seven years in federal prison.
Prosecutors say 67-year-old Edward Jay Stevens was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court in Phoenix.
Stevens previously had pleaded guilty to attempting to engage in trafficking with respect to peonage, slavery, involuntary servitude and forced labor.
He was arrested in an FBI sting in 2013 that involved undercover agents posing as a human trafficking ring on a website.
Court records show Stevens responded to an advertisement for an auction of kidnapped females.
Stevens had conversations with undercover FBI agents in which he allegedly said he was interested in purchasing a kidnapped woman and holding her against her will.
“This is an extreme case,” said Dr. Dominique Roe-Sepowitz, an Arizona State University professor. She runs the school’s Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research.
“This is a man with significant disturbances. To want someone to cook and clean for you, and is locked in a room and has no free will has a perversion in what his ideas in what sexuality is and what intimacy is,” she added.
Three other men were caught in the same FBI sting. Their cases are still pending in court.
