YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- The second half of a cruel duo -- Jessica Hunt -- was sentenced Thursday to 32 years in prison. That is two more years than her boyfriend received on Tuesday for keeping a mentally disabled woman as a domestic slave for nearly two years.
U.S. District Judge Benita Pearson sentenced Hunt, 33, of Ashland, after a day-long hearing. She could have sentenced Hunt and her co-defendant, Jordie Callahan, 28, to up to life in prison because a jury found that kidnapping was an element of the labor-trafficking charges they were convicted of during a March trial.
Pearson took particular issue with trial testimony that Hunt enlisted her minor children in the vicious and brutal treatment of the victim and her 5-year-old daughter.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Chelsea Rice and Thomas Getz had asked the judge to punish Hunt more severely than her boyfriend due to allegations of obstruction of justice lodged against her.
Callahan did not testify in his own defense at the trial, but Hunt did take the stand, denying nearly every charge made against her by prosecution witnesses. Hunt denied forcing the victim to work for her and said she did not hit the woman or treat her with cruelty, such as forcing her face into dog excrement.
"Labor trafficking cases are significant, and in this case the conduct was flat-out reprehensible," said U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach. "People need to understand that exploiting vulnerable people for their own greed is going to lead them to a jail cell."
The prosecutors accused Callahan and Hunt of "committing unspeakable acts of cruelty, abuse and humiliation to a cognitively disabled woman and young child," and of "treating the mother and child with less dignity and worth than their animals," according to court documents.
The victim in the case suffered brain injuries in a car accident as a teen, leaving her with the mental acuity of a 13- or 14-year-old.
Witnesses in the two-week trial described how Callahan and Hunt made the 30-year-old victim work for them by use of force and threats from January 2011 to October 2012. The woman and her daughter lived as virtual prisoners in a squalid basement apartment inside the house where Callahan and Hunt lived, the witnesses said. The victim accused Callahan of raping her and the couple of kicking, punching and beating her.
Two other co-defendants, Dezerah Silsby, 23, and Daniel Brown, 35, were previously sentenced to four and five years in prison, respectively, for their roles in the forced-labor conspiracy.