Accused says client/victim is getting off ‘scot free’

ALLEN COUNTY, Ind. (WANE) – The child sex trafficking case filed two years ago in Allen Superior Court was a first here.

Brooke Thompson, depicted as the mastermind of a ring exploiting an underaged girl, was charged with promotion of child sexual trafficking and promoting prostitution, among other related charges.

But the 42-year old Ossian resident has had enough of being incarcerated at the Allen County Jail.

Thursday, Thompson took a plea deal on one count of promoting prostitution with a cap of eight years served in prison.

The most grievous charge – promotion of child sex trafficking – was dismissed.

‘I finally folded’ Thompson said. ‘You have no idea what it’s like in here’

“I finally folded,” Thompson told WANE 15 earlier this week during a phone call from the jail. “I just can’t take it. I miss my family. I just want out of it. You have no idea what it’s like in here.”  

Thompson filed two complaints in federal court against the jail. In one case filed against a confinement officer, Thompson said she’d been denied medications for her various mental conditions which include PTSD. In court, she told the magistrate she suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and took medications when she was allowed access to them.

Because she was denied meds, she had seizures, she said.

She was co-charged with her own son and his friend

Thompson was accused of coaching an underaged girl to have sex with men, and her accomplices were Thompson’s son, Caleb and Caleb Thompson’s friend, Ridge Borne.

Both took plea deals in November 2021 in exchange for agreeing to testify against Thompson.

Caleb Thompson, who would have testified against his own mother, was charged in March 2021 and set free on monitored release a day later. He is set to be sentenced on March 20 in Allen Superior Court Judge David Zent’s courtroom.

Borne, also charged in March 2021, is scheduled to be sentenced on March 20, also by Zent.

Both men, Caleb Thompson, 24, and Borne, 21, have been free since their release. The victim, who was 16 in January 2019 when the trafficking is said to have occurred, is now 18 or older.

Thompson has held out from caving because she says the facts are different than what was presented in a probable cause affidavit, a confusing amalgamation of two different cases that begins with describing Thompson as a prostitute operating under the name of Carmen on a website called skipthegames.com.

Client used skipthegames.com

Her client, called victim 1, admitted to utilizing her services, not once but at least twice between April 3, 2020 and April 24, 2020, according to the probable cause.

But the client or so-called victim has not been charged with patronizing a prostitute or anything else. His first name was accidentally divulged in the probable cause, available on Indiana’s Odyssey court documents.

He told police friends he got threatening messages from Thompson after the second “massage.” The client said Thompson claimed to know the underaged girl he had sex with and she was going to expose him publicly if he didn’t pony up thousands of dollars.

Client said Thompson and accomplices extorted him

According to the probable cause affidavit, she threatened to post fliers in his neighborhood and contact his business associates and family members.

Initially he paid the sums demanded of him, sometimes $2,500, other times $1,000. Thompson’s son, Caleb was also in the deal, scaring the client with stories of “really dangerous people” who were after him and who “had no problem shooting him or the victim” if he didn’t pay up.

FWPD Vice & Narcotics pulled in to stop threats

The client turned to friends in FWPD’s Vice & Narcotics Unit who sent a text message to Thompson asking her how much it would take to stop making the allegations. Court documents said Thompson took the bait and started out demanding $4,000, then raised it to $5,000 and then, $6,000.

She never got that sum of money, court documents said. After agreeing to meet the client on April 24, 2020 at a McDonald’s at 4 p.m. Vice and Narcotics officers pulled her 2003 Silver Buick Century over at a traffic stop. Borne was driving, and there was another passenger along with Thompson.

The officers said the car smelled like marijuana and they found two bags of marijuana, weighing 15.2 grams and 39.5 grams, in the car along with a couple of cigars stuffed with the drug.

When Thompson was interviewed by Miller, she admitted to having an account on skipthegames.com, court documents said. She blamed her son and his friend, Borne, for extorting money from the victim/client. She said it was Borne, or “Ridge” as he’s referred to in the probable cause, as the one who drove her to the client’s house for the massage encounters.

Court documents put quotation marks around the word massage. The probable cause also said that the client/victim used skipthegames.com website “to meet with guys for money,” not the narrative first presented in the probable cause where it was said he hired Thompson and the underaged girl, both female.

Added to the probable cause is the child sex trafficking case against her. Thompson is accused of setting up an account for the underaged girl named “Trinity.”

For his part, her son, Caleb, told detectives that his mother told him the client/victim  “was worth a lot of money” and if they threatened him with the story about having sex with an underaged client, they could get money from him to keep it under wraps.

Plan to soak the clients

Caleb said his mother coached “Trinity” to represent herself as underaged and soak the clients for more money. There was more than one client and “they made approximately $350 to $400 with this technique,” court documents say. According to Caleb, his mother said she wanted to split the money four ways since she set up the meetings.

When Caleb turned over his phone, detectives found messages attributed to his mother to the client/victim ordering him to pay $1,000 for a hotel in New Haven for one week.

“Those are my demands. If I don’t get a met (sic) then I’ll just hook up with one of my Allegheny please (sic) officer friends that bus (sic) people and works in special Ops and I’ll give him your information. It’s your choice. Sleep, Have a good night, Let me know 1^st thing in the morning or when you can.”

Message to victim: ‘I want it all today…think real carefully’

Another threatening message: “I want it all today y don’t u open up your safe in the house cause u got it in there think real carefully.”

Cautionary tale that it is, Thompson says the victim/client who used her services is “getting off scot free. He’s getting nothing. He was a client of mine. You’re talking about an old client of mine. He called the police. He was getting threatened by my son and this girl.”

Had she taken the stand for her trial that was scheduled for next week, she would have likely told her story. But she got a new defense attorney who worked with Allen County prosecutors to reduce charges without releasing her from jail as she had requested.

Her life hasn’t been easy, she said. While her mother provided a stable home, it was one where different men were around. At 18, an older man offered to take her out to Los Angeles, which sounded far better than Ossian, Indiana.

When she got there, she said she was put in a hotel room and told if she didn’t bring in $2,000 a day, she’d get “her a—beat.” She admits to being an escort, a polite term for the prostitution and “massages” that became a way of making money, but she also started a cleaning business years ago.

‘I’ll take my role’ as an escort, but not a child sex trafficker

“I’ll take my role, (but I don’t admit to) bringing that little girl anywhere around him,” Thompson said.

In the courtroom, she teared up when she told the magistrate what she did to deserve the charges. Softly, she admitted to participating in promoting prostitution for someone named “E.T.”

She will be sentenced May 26 in Allen Superior Court Judge Fran Gull’s court.