SANTA ANA, California – A man previously convicted and sentenced to 14 years in federal prison for transporting minors to work as prostitutes today received what is effectively another 14-year sentence for engaging in the same conduct involving a 19-year-old victim almost immediately after he was released from custody in the first case.
William Earl Flavors, aka “Andre,” 40, who most recently resided in Long Beach, was sentenced this morning to 10 years in federal prison. United States District Judge Josephine L. Staton ordered that this sentence run consecutive to a four-year prison term he received last year based on related conduct for violating his supervised release on his prior federal conviction, meaning that Flavors has been ordered to serve 14 years in prison for acting as a pimp for girls in 2012.
At today’s sentencing hearing, Judge Staton discussed a letter that Flavors wrote to the Court in which he blamed the judicial system and the probation department for his current “predicament” and that he “not given a fair chance.” Judge Staton noted “beating women and forcing them into prostitution is not a ‘predicament,’ but a choice – a choice that defendant made.”
Flavors pleaded guilty in December to transportation in interstate commerce for purposes of prostitution. Flavors specifically admitted that he transported his victims between Long Beach to Las Vegas, forced or coerced them to work as prostitutes in Las Vegas, and used physical abuse and threats of additional physical abuse to make one of his victims work for him as a prostitute.
“In order to coerce and force [the victim] into continuing to engage in prostitution, defendant physically abused her, threatened her with additional physical abuse, and did not allow her to leave him,” according to a sentencing memo filed by prosecutors. The sentencing memo also details the physical abuse defendant carried out on his victim, including “beating her with his fists and on one occasion burning her legs with a lit cigarette.”
Today’s sentencing concludes the second case in which Flavors has been convicted in federal court of trafficking women across state lines and forcing them to work as prostitutes. In December 1999, he pleaded guilty to transportation of a
15-year-old girl and a 17-year-old girl in interstate commerce for prostitution. In addition to transporting these minors from Washington to California, Flavors beat, raped and forced these girls into prostitution on his behalf, according to court documents.
In the 1999 case, Flavors’ “depravity towards his victims included, among other acts: breaking one victim’s nose from beating her; and beating another victim with clothes hangers, burning her with curling irons, and forcing her to drink cups of urine and cigarette butts,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo.
The case against Flavors was investigated by Federal Bureau of Investigation.
