In April 2016, an 18-year-old woman — at the court’s request she's called Jane Doe — was working as an exotic dancer at a bar in Miami, Florida. There she met David Johnson, who convinced her to come with him to Los Angeles, where he promised she would make more money. She went, and for the next two years, according to the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s Office, the man she thought loved her convinced her to work for him as a prostitute, beating and threatening her. The District Attorney filed human trafficking charges against Johnson in 2017, but during his trial last week, he pleaded guilty to three counts of human trafficking, pimping, and pandering, including great bodily injury in connection with all charges.
The relationship between Johnson and Doe, which Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Karapetian described at the opening of the trial on Wednesday, was a twisted and exploitative one. Santa Barbara authorities became involved when in June 2017 an undercover officer with the city police department solicited Doe’s services on Backpage.com, a website notorious for escort advertisements. The case that unfolded from there could put Johnson in state prison for as many as 57 years.
In July 2016, Johnson and Doe moved from Los Angeles to Provo, Utah, where he taught her how to use Backpage and convinced her to engage in prostitution. Doe allegedly had engagements with 40 clients in Utah before she was convicted for stealing and for trying to obtain a fake prescription for a drug containing codeine. Though she committed these crimes under Johnson’s orders, Doe was so terrified by his threats to kill her that she never mentioned his name to Utah authorities.