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Two runaway teenage girls told police that a St. Paul family kidnapped them and forced them into prostitution, drugging them and pistol-whipping them when they resisted, according to court documents.
Police arrested five people when they raided a home to rescue one of the girls. A mother and her two sons have been charged. Four other children ages 2 to 10 who lived at the home were put in protective custody, said police spokesman Pete Crum.
"There are details in this case that are very disturbing," he said. "I think the word torture would be valid."
The teenagers told investigators that they were subdued by being forced to smoke crack, take sleeping pills or use methamphetamine.
The Ramsey County attorney's office on Monday charged Lamiea Shellike Ball, a 34-year-old mother, with kidnapping, aiding and abetting criminal sexual conduct and terrorizing the two girls.
It wasn't immediately clear if Ball had an attorney. She was held Thursday in the county jail, where a jail official said a phone interview wasn't possible.
Ball's 16-year-old son was charged with four counts of kidnapping for aiding and abetting criminal sexual conduct. Ball's 15-year-old son was charged, but details of that case were not released because of his age. Prosecutors sought to have the teens, both juveniles, charged as adults.
One of the girls said she was lured to the home by a convicted sex offender who offered her a baby-sitting job and drove her to a house. There, a woman whom the girl later identified as Ball said "she had been brought there to 'ho' for her," according to the complaint.
Ball asked the girl to call her "Momma" and pistol-whipped her and forced her into a bedroom closet, where she was kept for several hours at a time, according to an affidavit for a search warrant. The girl said the gun was never out of Ball's reach.
Authorities said the girls were kept virtually naked. They were taken out only to be beaten or whipped, to do housework or to perform sex acts.
The group also placed ads in Twin Cities newspapers and allegedly ran a prostitution ring via computers and cell phones.
One of the girls said she escaped at one point but was taken back at gunpoint. She broke out of the house in mid-February after at least a month of captivity, police said. She didn't seek out authorities to report what had happened to her, but returned to living on the streets. Police picked her up Feb. 22 and took her to the juvenile detention center, where she told her story.
That's when she mentioned that a second girl was still being held at the house.
"That became our main objective, getting her out," Crum said.
Crum said it appears that both girls were too traumatized to ask police for help, even when officers were inside the house responding to other calls.
The family moved after a fire at their first house on March 3, and police found the second girl in another house on Friday. She said she had been held for about three months.
Police Sgt. Paul Schnell, one of the lead investigators in the case, said police were able to corroborate many aspects of the two girls' stories. And he said there may be other victims.
"It was very brutish and very violent behavior," he said. "It just seems like drastic behavior to engage in for the first time."
Police arrested five people when they raided a home to rescue one of the girls. A mother and her two sons have been charged. Four other children ages 2 to 10 who lived at the home were put in protective custody, said police spokesman Pete Crum.
"There are details in this case that are very disturbing," he said. "I think the word torture would be valid."
The teenagers told investigators that they were subdued by being forced to smoke crack, take sleeping pills or use methamphetamine.
The Ramsey County attorney's office on Monday charged Lamiea Shellike Ball, a 34-year-old mother, with kidnapping, aiding and abetting criminal sexual conduct and terrorizing the two girls.
It wasn't immediately clear if Ball had an attorney. She was held Thursday in the county jail, where a jail official said a phone interview wasn't possible.
Ball's 16-year-old son was charged with four counts of kidnapping for aiding and abetting criminal sexual conduct. Ball's 15-year-old son was charged, but details of that case were not released because of his age. Prosecutors sought to have the teens, both juveniles, charged as adults.
One of the girls said she was lured to the home by a convicted sex offender who offered her a baby-sitting job and drove her to a house. There, a woman whom the girl later identified as Ball said "she had been brought there to 'ho' for her," according to the complaint.
Ball asked the girl to call her "Momma" and pistol-whipped her and forced her into a bedroom closet, where she was kept for several hours at a time, according to an affidavit for a search warrant. The girl said the gun was never out of Ball's reach.
Authorities said the girls were kept virtually naked. They were taken out only to be beaten or whipped, to do housework or to perform sex acts.
The group also placed ads in Twin Cities newspapers and allegedly ran a prostitution ring via computers and cell phones.
One of the girls said she escaped at one point but was taken back at gunpoint. She broke out of the house in mid-February after at least a month of captivity, police said. She didn't seek out authorities to report what had happened to her, but returned to living on the streets. Police picked her up Feb. 22 and took her to the juvenile detention center, where she told her story.
That's when she mentioned that a second girl was still being held at the house.
"That became our main objective, getting her out," Crum said.
Crum said it appears that both girls were too traumatized to ask police for help, even when officers were inside the house responding to other calls.
The family moved after a fire at their first house on March 3, and police found the second girl in another house on Friday. She said she had been held for about three months.
Police Sgt. Paul Schnell, one of the lead investigators in the case, said police were able to corroborate many aspects of the two girls' stories. And he said there may be other victims.
"It was very brutish and very violent behavior," he said. "It just seems like drastic behavior to engage in for the first time."