Man Guilty Of Promoting Prostitution Yakima Resident Convicted On Eight Counts, Faces Sentence Of Up To 25 Years In Prison

A Yakima man was convicted Tuesday of running a prostitution ring with more than a dozen teenage girls.

Walter Anthony Modest, 29, was convicted in Yakima County Superior Court of two counts of first-degree promoting prostitution, three counts of being an accomplice to child rape and three counts of being an accomplice to child prostitution.

He faces up to 25 years in prison if Judge Michael Leavitt issues an exceptional sentence on Oct. 20. The standard sentence would be 10 years.

Modest ran an operation in which teenage girls - most of them runaways - were offered as prostitutes from Yakima area homes and motels to bars and labor camps.

Three others - Modest’s brother, Mikal Modest; his ex-wife Carol Westler; and Robert Boyles - started the ring in 1992. They each accepted plea-bargaining agreements.

Prosecutors said Walter Modest dictated the ring’s activity between January and June 1994 - the period from which the eight charges stem - by intimidation, making collect calls from a pay phone in the Yakima County jail while he was being held on an unrelated offense.

Westler testified Modest had called her at least 10 times a day and had threatened to torture and kill her if she didn’t follow his directions for the prostitution ring. On at least three occasions, Westler said, Modest used intimidation to force Westler to rape a 14-year-old prostitute with a sex device while he listened in from a jail pay phone.

Those rapes were Modest’s method of punishment for disobedience, Westler said.