Content warning: This piece contains general discussion of child sexual abuse. However, in this case, the year-old mother is being painted as a villain. Almost all the coverage on it features the same news story that ran last October on a local crime blotter , Latesha Clay was used by two older teenagers, Trayvin Donnell Lewis, 18, and Monee Duepre Atkinson, 17, to lure men to their motel room. Both Lewis and Atkinson await criminal convictions, and like Clay, have both been charged as adults, though legally only Lewis is no longer a minor.
Charging Black children as adults for crimes less severe than their white juvenile counterparts have committed is nothing new, but it is especially disheartening in the case of Clay, who, at 15, is a long ways off from adulthood.
Mlive, the website that initially ran her story, asserts that a man came to a hotel room expecting to have sex with a teenager. Upon arrival, he was greeted by Clay, who took the agreed upon payment and stepped aside. Lewis allegedly then came forward brandishing what investigators later said was an Airsoft pistol with the orange tip removedβnot even a real firearm.
Lewis is being charged with possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, even though an Airsoft gun was the only firearm found on premises. All three teenagers were hauled in and interrogated. Latesha Clay fits the profile for a victim of sex-traffickingβshe is under 18, her body was advertised over the internet as available for men to violate, and she appeared to be working withβmore likely working forβolder men. But because the men robbed did not engage in sexual activity with her, she was tried as an adult on armed robbery and unlawful imprisonment charges.
The girl desperately trying to provide for her two young children is the perpetrator. Although I have an incredible amount of sympathy for Latesha Clay, we have very little in common. Had I become pregnant at the age Latesha did, my whiteness would have made me the victim of a horrible crime. I would have been offered an abortion and counseling. In fact, she was impregnated again a year later at the age of Latesha Clay and I share one thing in common, though: I was an escort at 15 as well.
