Woman says Steven Gilbert sold her for sex in Lorain County for four years

Steven Gilbert trafficked at least eight women, possibly more, for sex from North Ridgeville to Elyria and Grafton and elsewhere for more than four years, one of his alleged victims testified in court on Tuesday. Gilbert sold large quantities of drugs that he used to control the women, she said. He monitored their every move, forcing them to comply with his rules and orders through threats, intimidation and violence, she testified. He also carried guns, drove expensive cars and bought designer clothes, while laundering money from his prostitution ring through a legitimate corporation that was eventually torn down by local investigators in late 2021. Most of the women were addicted to drugs and forced to do whatever Gilbert said just to survive, the first of them to testify told a Lorain County Common Pleas jury on Tuesday. The woman, now in her 30s, testified for three hours Tuesday in the case against Gilbert, a 36-year-old Elyria man. He has pleaded not guilty to dozens of felony charges including rape, kidnapping, sexual battery, human trafficking, compelling and promoting prostitution, racketeering and money laundering in connection with alleged crimes from 2017 through 2021. The woman is not being named by The Chronicle-Telegram because she is an alleged sexual abuse and human trafficking victim. Raped by her uncle at age 12, the woman testified she began snorting cocaine at age 15. She later had a child. Her son's father handed her over to drug dealers, who would rape her and give the boyfriend crack cocaine in exchange. She said he was arrested in an Elyria police raid in 2007 and moved home with her parents. She got a college degree and worked in the medical field for five years. During that time, a doctor she worked for forced her to perform sex acts in exchange for prescription painkillers, she said. Another doctor she worked for hid secret cameras in his office, photographing her naked. That same doctor later had his office raided by authorities after he offered painkillers to a female undercover DEA agent in exchange for sex, she said. The woman ended up in court in 2016 after police found drugs in her car. She began snorting heroin and resorted to borrowing and stealing from family, then selling her body to men for sex to feed her drug addiction, she testified. In mid-2017, she met Gilbert, then just a drug dealer who went by the nicknames "Cheddar" or, more commonly, "Cheese." The woman later lost custody of her son during her first stint in drug treatment, she testified. Feeling betrayed by family, she said, she was kicked out of rehab "because I had given up." "I didn't see a reason to live," she said through tears, talking about living in a shed in someone's backyard because she had no other place to go. She was soon reintroduced to Gilbert, who started giving her drugs in exchange for sex: Consensual, at first, she testified. For the next four years, the woman testified she worked as a prostitute with Gilbert as her "pimp," giving him all the money she earned from seeing as many as six or seven "johns" per day. Gilbert would shuffle her between filthy apartments and rented motel rooms across three counties, according to check-in records presented by prosecutors in court. She was only allowed to use the drugs Gilbert provided. She said she saw Gilbert beat other women who didn't earn enough money for him or stepped out of line. She lived in fear that it would happen to her, too, she testified. Everything she did was "a means of survival," the woman testified. Prices for the women ranged at times for $60 for 15 minutes up to $240 for an hour throughout the time frame of the scheme. The alleged victim testified that prices went up during the COVID-19 pandemic when people were stuck at home — with some "johns" using fraudulently obtained pandemic unemployment assistance to pay for sex. By 2019, she was ready to get out. She escaped several times, she testified, but each time Gilbert found her and brought her back or she went back to him out of fear, she said. "As if I could ever come to him and say, 'I want out,'" she said. "He's trying to help himself always." Remembering the beatings she said she saw Gilbert give other women, the witness testified she believed Gilbert "was gonna do a lot worse to me if I didn't act right." "I believed if I tried to leave he was going to kill me. I was like a slave to a master," she testified. It's not uncommon for women forced into prostitution to have suffered sexual abuse in the past, to have substance use disorders, be alienated from their families and to be physically abused by their traffickers, said Detective John Morgan, commander of the Cuyahoga Regional Human Trafficking Task Force, who testified in court Tuesday. Some are tattooed with their pimps' names, show signs of physical abuse or suddenly have more spending cash than they did before, Morgan said. Most of them don't trust the police, he said. Gilbert posted ads selling women for sex on websites, Morgan testified. Sometimes, the women he trafficked were forced to train and traffic other women. "Johns" often met the women at area motels or at apartments in Elyria or Grafton. The recently shuttered Journey Inn on Lorain Boulevard in Elyria was one of the motels mentioned in testimony Tuesday. The alleged victim said Gilbert also trafficked women out of the Camelot Inn and the Knights Inn on Griswold Road in Elyria; the Ridge Motel on Center Ridge Road and the Motel 6 on Lorain Road in North Ridgeville; and the Motel 6 on Leavitt Road in Amherst. Gilbert also expanded his business to motels in Erie County in late 2020 and early 2021, she testified. Her testimony resumes today before a jury of 11 women and three men in Judge James Miraldi's court. Gilbert, who is represented by defense attorney Steve Albenze, already is serving a 10- to 15-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to drug and weapons charges in common pleas court last year. Contact Dave O'Brien at (440) 329-7129 or dobrien@chroniclet.com. Follow him on Twitter @DaveOBrienCT.