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	Podcast:		Maine Things Considered
	Episode:		Couple Held Indefinitely On Charges Of Sex Trafficking In New England
	Category:		Government & Organizations
	Duration:		00:02:02
	Publish Date:		2019-01-22 16:42:00
	Description:		A federal judge in Portland ordered the indefinite detention today of a Chinese woman and her naturalized U.S. husband on sex-trafficking charges. Federal prosecutors allege New Hampshire residents Derong Miao and her husband, Shou Chao Li, used social media app WeChat to recruit more than 25 young Chinese women as sex workers in northern New England. Prosecutors say that lacking English skills, the women found themselves shuttled around hotels and apartments in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, sometimes deprived of travel documents and room keys. And they were trapped in debt to their employers, which prosecutors say they had to pay off through prostitution. “Victims who were kept in a number of hotels and residences in conditions that were incredibly unfair, where they were left for hours at a time, often without food to engage in prostitution in circumstances that would suggest they had been defrauded and coerced into doing that activity,” says Darcie McElwee, an assistant U.S.
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