Prosecutors wrap up two cases of Selah men accused of sexually abusing trafficked teen girl

SELAH, Wash. – In 2020, 11 men were arrested in connection with a mother sex trafficking her then-14-year-old daughter for drug money.

As of now, only one defendant remains untried. A bench warrant is out for his arrest after he failed to appear at a court hearing.

In April Yakima County prosecutors resolved two cases by dismissing the felony counts.

Yakima County Prosecuting Attorney Joe Brusic said it came down to a lack of key evidence: The victim doesn’t want to cooperate with prosecutors anymore.

“The process took a lot out of her, and she didn’t want to be involved anymore,” Brusic said. “We had to make tough decisions on the remaining cases.”

It is a standing policy in the prosecutor’s office to not compel a sexual assault victim to testify against their will, Brusic said.

The Yakima Herald-Republic typically does not publish the name of sexual assault victims without their consent.

Joseph Charles Hurst, a 60-year-old Selah real estate broker, was originally charged with five counts of commercial sex abuse of a minor and a count of communicating with a minor for immoral purposes. Those charges were dismissed with prejudice in return for Hurst’s guilty plea to a single count of fourth-degree assault in Yakima County District Court.

He was sentenced to 364 days in jail, with all but four days suspended.

Brusic said there was enough evidence without the victim’s testimony to support the misdemeanor assault charge, which can include touching someone against their will.

In the other case, Rickey Casey Chavez’s charges of third-degree child rape, violating a protection order, distributing marijuana and Percocet to a minor were dismissed with prejudice “in the interests of justice,” according to court documents.

By dismissing the felony charges against Hurst and Chavez, also a Selah resident, with prejudice, prosecutors cannot refile them, even if the victim were to change her mind and begin cooperating again.

The only outstanding case is Jose Alejandro Perez-Duran, 41, of Yakima who has a warrant out for his arrest after failing to appear at a hearing in the case.

The other men received sentences ranging from 31/2 years in state prison to a day in the county jail, while one defendant, Matthias Karsten Callaway, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison on federal charges of enticing a minor.

One defendant had his charges dropped shortly before he died.

Most of the men were accused of paying to have sex with the girl. One man was accused of raping the girl.

The arrests were made after Yakima police responded to a 2020 call for a then-15-year-old girl going through opioid withdrawal, according to court records. She told police that her mother got her addicted to pain pills and she started having sex for money to pay for the drugs, court documents said.

When her mother learned what she was doing, the mother then started setting up appointments with men for her to “make sure she did it safely,” according to the documents.

Detectives identified her customers through her cellphone records, court documents said.

The girl’s mother was sentenced to almost 17 years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts each of promoting the commercial sex abuse of a minor and violating a no-contact order, as well as one count each of commercial sex abuse of a minor, giving Percocet to a minor, witness tampering and an unrelated eluding charge in 2021.

The Yakima Herald Republic is not naming the woman to protect her daughter’s identity.