Charges against a Waukesha man accused of illegally pimping out a 23-year-old woman have been dismissed following a prosecutor's investigation into the incident that revealed substantial evidentiary discrepancies.
Waukesha County Court Commissioner Laura Lau dismissed one count of human trafficking against 30-year-old Juan A. Williams at a brief hearing in late May. Williams was released from his signature bond the same day.
Williams was one of two men accused in April of using fear, intimidation, physical violence and drugs to force a woman he and Rodney Cleary supposedly met at a battered women's shelter into prostitution.
At the hearing, Assistant District Attorney Michael Thurston moved to dismiss the charge against Williams, saying evidence he received from the alleged victim was 'substantially different' from, and apparently contradictory to, evidence he received from a forensic examination of cellphone records.
Lau did not ask him to elaborate before dismissing the charge.
However, court records show that the case against the 26-year-old Cleary, a Milwaukee resident, is still pending.
According to a criminal complaint, the victim told police she met Cleary and Williams in August 2015 through another resident at the Waukesha Women's Center. They offered her a place to stay and money to help her get back on her feet, the complaint said.
But instead, Cleary and Williams allegedly arranged several prostitution dates for the woman at various locations around the city, including parking lots at the public library, a social services center, a Dollar Store and a back road near a fast-food restaurant. The woman estimated in the complaint that she had sex with about 30 different male 'customers' from September to October 2015.
Cleary and Williams kept all the money the woman was paid for the sexual encounters, the complaint said.
Police reportedly found seminude photos of the woman in ads with provocative titles on a prostitution website. The photos had been posted there, according to the complaint, by someone with the email address rodneycleary14@gmail.com.