Darnell Fulton, a 39-year-old man from Pineville, Louisiana, has been sentenced to 35 years in prison for conspiracy to commit forced labor and transporting a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity. The sentence was announced by Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, United States Attorney Brandon B. Brown, and Special Agent in Charge Douglas A. Williams, Jr. of the FBI New Orleans Field Office.
Fulton used violence, sexual abuse, withholding of food, degradation, and intimidation to coerce multiple minors to work for his brownie baking business and provide him with the profits. He required the victims to travel to multiple locations a day, such as plazas, car dealerships, law firms, restaurants, and parking lots, to sell brownies. The victims worked late into the night either selling or baking the brownies and sold them during the day. They typically worked seven days a week with very few breaks and had to meet a daily sales quota set by Fulton.
Fulton regularly assaulted the victims because he was not satisfied with their daily work performance, especially if they did not meet his projected sales daily quota. For example, he frequently required the victims to stay in a push-up or plank position for hours, and he often whipped them with a belt if they got out of proper form. Fulton also made the minor victims perform sexual acts with him and transported them across state lines to engage in criminal sexual activity with him.
Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division stated that "forced labor, especially when it involves sexual abuse of children, violence, and mental and physical anguish, is heinous conduct that has no place in our society today. The defendant mercilessly exploited children for his own financial gain and personal gratification, and we will not tolerate it."
U.S. Attorney Brandon B. Brown for the Western District of Louisiana also commented, saying that "forced labor is a form of modern-day slavery and we have a duty to protect the most vulnerable of our society. He had no hesitation in torturing and demoralizing these victims, his own children. We are grateful for this sentence and hope that the victims can begin the healing process. This defendant is a danger to society, has no regard for human life, and we believe it is appropriate that he will be spending a long time in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons."
The case was investigated by the FBI and Alexandria Police Department and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Luke Walker for the Western District of Louisiana and Trial Attorney Maryam Zhuravitsky of the Civil Rights Division’s Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit in Washington, DC.
The Justice Department urges anyone with information about human trafficking to report it to the National Human Trafficking Hotline toll-free at 1-888-373-7888, which is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For more information about human trafficking, please visit www.humantraffickinghotline.org. Information on the Justice Department’s efforts to combat human trafficking can be found at www.justice.gov/humantrafficking.