A mother and her son have been definitively brought to justice for coercing a woman into prostitution in DeKalb County. A conviction was secured against Vanessa Woods, 53, and her son, Allan Sanchez Woods, 30, on Thursday for pimping charges, as announced by DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston. The duo trapped the woman into performing sex acts for money, which they then took for themselves, according to FOX 5 Atlanta.
On an April evening in 2022, DeKalb County Police were called to a scene of domestic assault on Candler Road. A 28-year-old victim recounted how Allan Woods had not just physically attacked her but also gone so far as to try to forcibly prevent her from calling for help. "For about a year, the victim performed sexual acts for money and then turned the money over to Defendant Allan Woods. She told investigators that Allan Woods would not let her leave the house, kept her from seeing her family, deprived her of food and would often take away her phone," said Sherry Boston in a statement obtained by Atlanta News First.
Both the mother and son accepted their involvement in the case during the investigation. Allan Woods received a sentence that will effectively see him confined for 15 years and placed on probation for the remaining five of his 20-year sentence. His mother, Vanessa Woods, was handed a 12-month sentence, with half of that time to be served in custody. Additional charges of armed robbery and aggravated assault from an incident on April 25, 2022, significantly tacked onto Allan's criminal record.
Investigators learned that the initial contact between the victim and Allan Woods occurred via a dating website. He quickly took control, delegating his mother to facilitate the sordid operation by ferrying the victim to various locations and orchestrating communication. The justice system in DeKalb acted quite swiftly to hand down sentences to both perpetrators following their convictions. The actions were part of a wider effort by the DeKalb County District Attorney's Office and the Sexual Exploitation and Crimes Against Children Unit to combat such heinous crimes.
