Two Chester County men were convicted of holding two teenagers captive in a sex-trafficking ring

A Chester County jury on Friday convicted two alleged members of a Latino street gang of running a widespread sex-trafficking ring in plain sight.

Dimas “Adonys” Hernandez, 36, and Franklin “Mono” Rivera-Mendieta, 27, kept two teens captive in two apartments amid the suburban streets of East Whiteland Township.

Their crimes were revealed in May 2020, when a then-14-year-old girl persuaded the owner of the building where she was being held to help her contact her mother. The girl arranged her rescue with police during an early-morning meeting at a Wawa in Malvern.

Hernandez and Rivera-Mendieta were found guilty of trafficking in minors, involuntary servitude, kidnapping, rape, and related offenses for operating the ring, which catered to dozens of clients, according to Deputy District Attorney Erin O’Brien.

“These women endured things that many of us didn’t know happened, especially here in Chester County, in our backyard,” O’Brien said during her closing argument Friday afternoon. “But they escaped, and that’s how they ended up here in this courtroom, telling you about their trauma.”

Attorneys for the men attacked the credibility of the victims, and urged the jury to acquit their clients, saying the girls were runaways who at first willingly joined the ring and later regretted their decisions.

“None of these people were held against their will. They were running a business,” Ryan Hyde, Hernandez’s attorney, said Friday. “When they say these women were innocent dupes, that’s not true.”

» READ MORE: 18th Street gang behind Chester County child sex-trafficking case, court records say

But the jury of nine men and three women were not swayed, and found Hernandez and Rivera-Mendieta guilty of all counts after deliberating for nearly three hours late Friday.

The first victim, and another who was 18 at the time of her trafficking, testified during the weeklong trial in West Chester that the men held them against their will for months. They said they were forced to take drugs before being raped by men for $50, under threat that they and their families would be killed if they tried to escape.

Hernandez, the ring’s organizer, and Rivera-Mendieta are alleged associates of the 18th Street gang, an El Salvadoran group that operates mostly on the West Coast, according to two other members of the trafficking ring that testified during the trial.

But Kathleen Boyer, Rivera-Mendieta’s attorney, cautioned jurors about trusting the testimony of those men, whom she said were promised more lenient sentences in their own criminal cases for cooperating with prosecutors.

“We know they can lie when the circumstances suit them,” said Boyer, who added that the prosecution’s case was “riddled” with reasonable doubt. “People like that have something precious to gain.”

One of those codefendants, Josue Antonio Sibrian-Sanchez, 25, said he acted as the “doorman” at the homes on Lancaster Avenue in East Whiteland where the girls were being held. In exchange for a steady supply of drugs, he accepted the money clients paid to have sex with them, timed each encounter, and posted lewd pictures of the teens on Snapchat to advertise them.

The two were rarely allowed to leave without supervision from their captors, Sibrian-Sanchez said. At one point, he was scolded for leaving his phone out in the open and warned never to allow the younger victim to contact her family.

The victims, prosecutors said during the trial, had come to the area from Virginia. The older victim had recently entered the country illegally, was fleeing an abusive ex-boyfriend, and was promised a job at a bar to help make ends meet. Rivera-Mendieta brought her to Pennsylvania, where, she said, Hernandez forced her into having sex with him, telling her he had a gun and that no one knew where she was. She then began working as a prostitute against her will.

The younger victim, however, had been reported missing by her mother days after her disappearance from Fairfax, prosecutors said. The girl had started hanging out with members of MS-13, a rival gang to 18th Street, her mother told police, and she was worried about her.

» READ MORE: Sex-trafficking ring uncovered after 14-year-old victim tells mom: ‘I don’t want to be here anymore’

The girl testified that while at a house party, she was promised a job, money, and safety in Pennsylvania by a woman who was friends with Hernandez. Hernandez made arrangements for the girl to be picked up by Rivera-Mendieta and taken to East Whiteland, where she was repeatedly forced into having sex, under threat that her family would be harmed.

Eventually, she was able to escape after Humberto Ortiz, 37, another member of the organization, took pity on her and gave her his phone. She contacted her mother over Facebook, saying “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

After rescuing the girl from the Wawa in Malvern, detectives learned about the second, older victim. She testified that she was able to break away from the ring by threatening the men running it, and had moved into a home nearby.

Chester County Judge Alita Rovito deferred sentencing for Hernandez and Rivera-Mendieta for 90 days. They will remain in custody until then.