Click here if you are having a problem viewing this video on a mobile device
Natasha was a young victim of human trafficking who turned the tables on her abuser. On Friday January 12, she addressed the court before he was sentenced to 174 years to life. Click here to watch and listen to Natasha’s full emotional statement.
MARTINEZ — A woman who escaped a violent human trafficker and then spent years publicly sharing her harrowing story — until the man responsible was finally arrested — stood in court Friday to face him one last time before he was sentenced to life.
“I have spent my entire adult life being told to shut up, sit down, that couldn’t have happened to you, and you don’t look like a victim,” the woman, Natasha, said in an emotional sentencing hearing. “But as you well know by me standing here today, I never did any of those things. I have learned that being silent isn’t being strong. It’s being a victim, and a victim I am not.”
“I am a wife, a mother, sister, daughter and friend — everything you told me I would never be,” she continued, holding back tears. She later added, “I guess all the beatings, abuse and manipulation never really worked, because here I am, looking at you, speaking at your sentencing hearing. Who has the power now?”
Shortly after she spoke, the defendant, James Vernon Joseph Jr., 52, was sentenced to 174 years to life. The terms technically mean Joseph would have to serve 174 years in prison before he could be eligible for parole. Joseph was convicted of conspiring with others in a nationwide sex-trafficking ring, as well as numerous rapes and sexual assaults.
Friday’s hearing, in which Joseph insisted he was innocent and denounced his many accusers as “liars,” marked the end of a saga that has partially played out on a national stage, and involved criminal cases in California, New York and Missouri, two of which came about thanks to Natasha’s actions and words.
Joseph’s co-defendant, Avisa Lavassani, received a much different fate: a possible chance for redemption, after she unexpectedly took the stand Friday and testified that she too had been sexually assaulted and beaten by Joseph, and that she stayed with him out of fear. She was aggressively cross-examined by the prosecutor, during which she admitted to having helped the defendant “victimize” and traffic women.
She testified that she met Joseph when she was 18 and that it took her years — and being separated from him after their arrest in 2015 — before she realized how much he’d exploited her. Prosecutor Aron DeFerrari seemed incredulous, pointing out she had been away from him in 2008, and reading text messages she’d written that said “we” and “our” in the context of the trafficking ring.
After Lavassani’s testimony, Judge Barry Baskin, who also issued Joseph’s sentence, said he was willing to grant Lavassani a suspended sentence of 20 years in prison, meaning she would be freed unless she violated probation conditions. He suggested that would include an “ironclad” stay away order from Joseph, as well as volunteer hours, and postponed her sentencing until the end of the month.
Joseph is known by many aliases, including the nickname “Spyder,” and testified during trial that he had been involved in the sex industry since the 1990s. In his statement, he called the convictions “heinously fabricated lies” and quoted the section of the Ten Commandments that forbids bearing false witness.
“I am not a rapist, I am not a human trafficker, and I am not a kidnapper,” he said, later adding, “I will die in prison for something I simply and unequivocally did not do.”
The evidence against Joseph included the testimony of several women who said he raped and sodomized them, seized text messages where a woman apologized for “making” him choke her by “not being a better (expletive)” and wiretapped calls where he discussed day-to-day operations of the sex ring and bragged about his ability to turn women who had been child abuse victims into loyal prostitutes.
Before handing down the maximum sentence, Baskin called Joseph’s statement “cynical to the extreme” and said he’d shown “callous disrespect for the humanity of your victims, and that includes Ms. Lavassani.” DeFerrari, while noting that any of the possible sentences would put Joseph away for life, said Joseph had trafficked more than 100 women and deserved the maximum sentence.
“Mr. Joseph is nothing short of the ultimate predator and a monster who deserves no clemency and no mercy,” DeFerrari said.
In 2001, Joseph forced Natasha — among others — into sex trafficking, after meeting her in Alameda County and pretending to be a modeling recruiter. She later described brutal beatings and sexual assaults at his hands, but eventually she and another woman escaped and went to the police, during a trip to New York.
In 2009, Joseph was arrested in Missouri and charged with possessing a fake ID, but authorities found evidence he’d been trafficking women there, including one who told an officer he had taken her identification card. Still, he received a plea deal and promised the judge he wouldn’t get so much as a traffic ticket. Missouri authorities realized he had an active warrant from 2002 — issued after Natasha and the woman escaped — but police in New York passed on extraditing him.
It wasn’t until the next year — when Natasha told her story on “America’s Most Wanted” — that authorities arrested Joseph. He spent roughly a year in jail but then came to the Bay Area, where he set up a new trafficking ring with Lavassani as his “bottom girl,” or top sex worker. By coincidence, Natasha gave a talk in the area about human trafficking, where she told her story. An officer in the audience recognized Joseph, and the investigation into him began.
