By Eric Francis, Standard Correspondent
WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — A Quechee man has been charged with sexual slave trafficking after a woman told Hartford Police detectives that he’d spent months “terrorizing” her into performing sex acts in front of a webcam for customers on a pornographic website in order to earn money that he allegedly kept from her and spent instead on a girlfriend in Tennessee.
Jonathan Lazarus, 38, was brought into court on Friday afternoon where he pleaded innocent to felony counts of slave trafficking for the purpose of prostitution and lewd and lascivious conduct. Lazarus also pleaded innocent to an accompanying misdemeanor count of domestic assault before he was ordered held for lack of $25,000 bail.
The case came to light on Thursday when the woman’s parents called detectives at the Hartford Police Department and saying “they were scared for their daughter’s welfare” and the safety of her two young children, said Hartford Police Detective Kristinnah Adams in an affidavit filed with the court.
Adams said she was told that the Lazarus, who has lived in Quechee for the past five years, had worked to systematically cut off the woman from contact with any friends or services that could help her.
“Jonathan has completely isolated her to her residence and now has complete control over finances, her children, her transportation and communication with (her) family,” Adams wrote in her report, adding that the woman’s parents claimed she did not make it to a scheduled appointment with the WISE shelter program “because Jonathan took the car away and is now screening all of her phone calls.”
Adams said that she was able to talk with the woman “for a few seconds” by phone while Lazarus was out of earshot taking a showers and made arrangements to get her and her children to the police department to meet with police and a WISE representative which in turn led to an interview that resulted in the formal charges being filed against Lazarus.
Detective Adams said that the woman told her she had never been a willing participant in the pornographic activity and that Lazarus had effectively been forcing her to perform for a webcam that is connected to a live feed on an Internet pornography site.
“This has escalated to a new extreme in the last three months where Jonathan has been forcing her to participate in prostitution and pornography,” Adams wrote, adding that the woman said that a week ago Lazarus had been given a $500 “advance” payment for additional pornography and when she objected he allegedly, “grabbed her by the jaw and slammed her back into a wall…because she was refusing to cooperate in prostitution activity that he had set up.”
“Jonathan was forcing her to have sex with others to make money,” Adams said, adding that the woman claimed Lazarus recently “attempted to force her to travel to both Washington D.C. and New York to participate in prostitution” and allegedly told her that he wanted her to start working as an escort to earn additional money.
“Jonathan threatened to cut her off financially, remove her from the business that she created, and would take her children if she would not participate in pornography…videos that would be uploaded on a live feed to a porn website (that he) would be paid for…every day for approximately two hours a day,” Adams wrote.
“In several of these videos she was crying because she did not want to do the pornography…when she cried during theses incidents and was resisting Jonathan would coldly tell her `Guys don’t want to see you crying,’” Adams continued.
During Lazarus’ arraignment on Friday, Judge Kathleen Manley set bail at $25,000 noting that, while Lazarus does not have a previous criminal record, he has traveled around the country in recent years and lived in Canada in the past, and, according to the police report, has a girlfriend in Tennessee, who he visits on a regular basis, all of which Judge Manley said gave rise to a concern that he could be a risk of flight since he is now facing up to 16 years in prison if he were to be convicted.