Dubuque teen said her sexual abuse ‘felt like a lifetime that would never end’

CEDAR RAPIDS — A Dubuque teen said Wednesday she never imagined “something like this” would happen to her. “It changed me forever.”

“I was held against my will, abused and raped repeatedly by men that Jarod Anderson sold me to,” wrote the teen, in a victim impact statement read by an advocate with Chains Interrupted during Anderson’s sentencing. “Jarod Anderson raped me. I was a minor (17) at the time.”

The teen said this time period “felt like a lifetime that would never end.” She feared dying in the hotel room where she taken on May 21 and 22, 2024, and never seeing her family again.

“My life ended that day and during that time my spirit broken,” the teen said. “These things will never leave my memory and haunt me day and night.”

In her statement, she also asked the court to impose the life sentence — to ensure Anderson wouldn’t have the opportunity to do this to anyone else.

Anderson, 35, of Hiawatha, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for human trafficking a minor, third-degree sexual abuse, pimping, and two charges of sexual exploitation of a minor.

Sixth Judicial District Judge Ian Thornhill ran the four other charges concurrently with the mandatory life sentence. He also ordered Anderson to serve a special sentence of lifetime parole and comply with the sex offender registry.

Anderson also will be required to pay restitution to be determined later, Thornhill said. He also issued a five year no contact order to protect the victim.

In February, a Linn County jury deliberated about 90 minutes before finding Anderson guilty on the five charges.

In 2023, the Iowa Legislature changed the human trafficking of a minor law to increase the penalty to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

This was the first case charged in Linn County and the first to go to trial in Iowa under the new human trafficking of a minor law.

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Anderson, during sentencing, gave a statement that lasted more than 30 minutes. In it, he called his conviction and sentence a “modern day lynching,” blaming the victim for lying and blaming lawyers for his defense.

Anderson, who maintained his innocence during trial and testified, said “people of power delivered vengeance not justice.” He said the prosecution and law enforcement didn’t do their jobs because he is innocent.

He referred to himself as a “normal husband, family man, soccer dad who loves his children.”

Teen’s testimony recounted trafficking

The teen, who was 17 at the time of the incidents on May 21 and 22, 2024, testified she was sexually abused by Anderson after he gave her alcohol and psilocybin mushrooms and held her in a hotel room to have sex with “multiple, different men” in exchange for money.

The victim, now 18, didn’t recall many details of the first night of her ordeal except that “bad things” happened, including being “raped” twice by Anderson.

The teen recalled Anderson taking photos of her naked at the hotel on his cellphone. A woman, Tana Torres, was with Anderson and the teen during the incidents.

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The teen said she had planned to try to see her friend who lived in Cedar Rapids but instead, “he sold me to multiple, different men.”

During these incidents, the teen had her phone and tried to contact her sisters and others for help. She never called the police because she was “scared,” she testified. Anderson told her “bad things would happen” if she did, she said. She also was worried about her outstanding warrant if she contacted police.

The teen said Anderson left the room when men arrived to have sex with her. Sometime on May 22, she got out of the hotel room while Anderson was away, but Torres and two men were there.

She was rescued by a former youth service worker with Four Oaks. The teen had called him for help, and he and another woman called the police.

Police testified investigators found Anderson’s DNA and the DNA of an unknown male in the teen’s underwear.

Torres, 50, of Cedar Rapids, who testified at trial, corroborated some of the 17-year-old’s testimony but recalled some portions differently, while admitting she had been intoxicated with liquor and drugs during the May incidents.

Torres was charged with human trafficking a minor, second-degree sexual abuse, conspiracy to commit a forcible felony and prostitution, but was offered a plea agreement if she testified truthfully about the events involving the teen.

She pleaded to three charges of prostitution and conspiracy to commit prostitution, all aggravated misdemeanors. Torres was sentenced to up to eight years in prison.

Trish Mehaffey covers state and federal courts for The Gazette

Comments: (319) 398-8318; trish.mehaffey@thegazette.com