Two Detroit men sentenced to prison for raping, drugging and beating women
Two Detroit men have been sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to maintaining a drug house where women were raped, beaten, choked, drugged and forced into prostitution.
The office of U.S. Attorney's Office Dawn N. Ison in a news release announced Eligah Goodmon, 68, was sentenced Friday to serve 111 months in federal prison by District Judge Laurie Michelson. Erskin Bernard Perryman, 49, had been sentenced to 180 months in federal prison in March 2021.
The sentencings were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, federal officials added.
Goodmon and Perryman have been in custody since their arrest in February 2020 after investigators raided a Detroit home and found seven firearms, heroin, crack cocaine, traces of fentanyl, and a large amount of currency, according to the complaint.
According to court records, Goodmon and his son, Perryman, ran a drug and
prostitution house on Hazelwood, near the Lodge Freeway and Chicago Boulevard.
Goodmon lived in the house, while Perryman came to the house every day to provide crack cocaine and heroin to the drug-addicted women who lived there.
The women in the home purchased drugs from Perryman by performing commercial sex dates, the release notes.
If the women in the home did not comply with Perryman’s demands, he was violent with them. Goodmon collected money from commercial sex dates, provided the women with drugs, and monitored their drug usage.
“These defendants treated their victims like a commodity,” Ison Friday in a statement. “They targeted vulnerable women and exploited them for their own profit and fueled their drug addictions by providing them with drugs. We hope that today’s sentence offers these victims a sense of justice and closure and sends the message that we will not tolerate sex trafficking in our communities."
The pair, according to the criminal complaint, were charged with felony firearm possession, drug possession and maintaining a drug house.
Court records chronicle the four-year investigation that involved at least eight women.
The probe intensified in December 2019 after law enforcement found a dead woman inside the home. Investigators found drugs in a purse and her body near a tan couch that matched one shown in the woman's commercial sex advertisement on the website MegaPersonals.com.
“These defendants exploited their victims in the worst way. By plying their victims with drugs, forcing them to engage in commercial sex, and subjecting them to violence if they refused, the defendants took away the freedom and dignity to which these women are entitled,” said Josh P. Hauxhurst, acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit Field Office. “The FBI remains committed to working on behalf of victims across the state to hold traffickers responsible for their crimes."