EAU CLAIRE, Delete. (WEAU) – Two people accused of human trafficking had first appeared in court on Thursday.
Mark Scoville and Catherine Ottinger were arrested Wednesday between Fairchild and Stanley by Eau Claire County Sheriff’s deputies with the help of the Chippewa County Sheriff’s Office. Their arrests lead to a three-year investigation.
Prosecutors said Ottinger was trying to sell a child for sexual activity. She is charged with two crimes: trafficking a child and causing a child under the age of 13 to watch / listen to sexual activities.
Scoville is facing 32 charges, including second-degree sexual assault and human trafficking.
A provisional $ 5,000 cash bond was given to Ottinger on Thursday. Scoville received a preliminary cash bond of $ 25,000 on Thursday.
They are due to appear in court on April 13.
According to the charges, Scoville and Ottinger met through her then-boyfriend Charles Page, who died in 2019. Scoville and Page were friends.
The complaint says that Page and Scoville attacked different women, different women and girls.
“The allegation in the second-degree sexual assault section mentioned in the criminal complaint is specific to sexual contact or intercourse with an unconscious person and the defendant knows they are unconscious,” said Det. Don Henning with the Eau Claire County Sheriff’s Office.
According to the indictment, Page and Scoville had also trafficked women and girls by letting them perform commercial sex acts by giving them drugs in return.
“The determining factor in establishing a commercial sexual act is that the suspect received something in return and / or the victim received something valuable,” said Henning. “And in this case, when magnified, the drugs were valuable.”
He said the investigation initially started in 2018 as a drug trafficking case involving Fairchild.
“By obtaining information and intelligence on various targets in the Fairchild area, they learned that there was a potential human or sex trafficking component in the same homes involved in the alleged drug trafficking.” Henning said.
He said the drug component made this case unique.
“This is by far the largest human trafficking and sexual assault case we have had in connection with an investigation into drug trafficking in our province. We don’t often see those two intersecting in our community, ”said Henning.
He said multiple law enforcement agencies have been working on the case.
Scoville and Ottinger were arrested in 2019 and eventually released. Henning said prosecutors have waited until recently to proceed while building a case. Arrest warrants were initially issued for Scoville and Ottinger on March 24, 2021.
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