South Carolina sex trafficker who beat, starved and tattooed women sentenced to 40 years

A Newberry man who ran a violent sex and human trafficking ring in the Midlands and Upstate South Carolina has been sentenced to 40 years in federal prison.

Eric Rashun Jones controlled every aspect of the women that he forced to prostitute themselves, prosecutors said in court Thursday. He transported them around the state, tattooed his personal mark on their necks and hands, made them ask his permission to shower and eat, and sometimes starved them for days.

He plied them with drugs and then withheld the substances until they gave in to his demands. He filmed himself spitting on them and made them beat each other to prove their loyalty to him. And when Jones, 31, believed that they had disobeyed him, he beat them with his fists, pans, plates and handguns until their ears rang, their faces were bruised and misshapen and their mouths were full of loose teeth, the victims said.

Jones’ actions were the “epitome of human depravity,” U.S. District Judge Sherri Lydon said as she handed down the sentence. “Your actions violated the most basic human rights.”

In imposing a sentence ten years greater than the 30-year minimum requested by federal prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for South Carolina, Lydon, the former U.S. Attorney for South Carolina, reflected that it was one of the worst cases she had seen in her time on the bench.

“You destroyed a lot of lives, Mr. Jones, and this sentence and every day of it is so you don’t destroy more.”

Jones, represented by defense attorney Jonathan Milling, will have to serve out his sentence in the federal Bureau of Prisons. There is no parole in the federal system. Lydon also imposed a life sentence of supervised release.

Jones, also known as “E-Dolla” and “E,” was charged with ten counts on November 15, 2022. The charges were one count of human trafficking conspiracy, five counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion and three counts of witness tampering and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

On June 5, 2023, Jones pleaded guilty to one count each of being a felon in possession of a firearm, human trafficking conspiracy and one count of witness tampering.

In court and in indictments, Jones was accused of running a prostitution ring out of motels and hotels across South Carolina. Prosecutors estimated that Jones victimized up to 12 women, some of whom had been attending college when they met Jones. But even with Jones shackled and in an orange jumpsuit, all of the victims and their families were still too scared of him to come to court, Assistant United States Attorney Elliott Daniels told the judge.

“They’re still afraid of him and they’re still dealing with trauma,” said Daniels, who prosecuted the case along with Assistance U.S. Attorney Elle Klein.

But Jones’ control did not not begin with abuse. In statements and texts read out to the court, the victims described how Jones had made them feel wanted and understood, how in love with him they had been and how much they had come to fear him.

One victim, who was attending a Midlands college on a softball scholarship when she met Jones, texted him: “I would die for you, but I’m not willing to die by your hands.”

Of the six victims named in the indictment, five had never been involved in commercial sex work, Daniels told the court, and three were attending college or university in South Carolina when they met Jones.

But Jones targeted vulnerable women, including those suffering from drug addiction, mental illness and homelessness.

Records and witness statements read in court describe how Jones, along with his cousin Brittany Cromer, ran this criminal enterprise, which generated tens of thousands of dollars, with violence and fear. Everything from escape to even just the appearance of disobedience would be met with overwhelming cruelty. While Jones made promises about splitting money with his victims, who he coerced into selling sex in rented rooms in Lexington, Newberry, Greenville, Spartanburg and Anderson counties, he regularly refused or offered them drugs they had become addicted to instead of cash.

Cromer pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and was sentenced to five years in federal prison.

In parts of a statement read in court, the victim who won the softball scholarship described how one time she didn’t hear Jones honking his horn, telling her to come out of a nail salon. Jones stormed in and dragged her out by her hair. He locked her in her room for nine days, beating her with household items and leaving her with permanent hearing damage.

Convinced she was going to die, she grabbed Jones’ gun but her hand were shaking too much to pull the trigger. Jones grabbed the gun out of her hands and held her face over a lit burner on the stove, singeing her eyelashes.

When another victim attempted to engage in commercial sex without Jones in November 2021, he tracked her down and imprisoned her inside a Microtel in Greenville. Telling her that he would put her “six feet under,” Jones confiscated her possessions and clothes, leaving her naked in a hotel room where she was forced to have sex with men for money.

In videos Jones filmed that were played in court, he can be heard directing victims to attack each other. In one, a young woman cries and pleads while sitting on a hotel room bed. Between sobs, she swears — “on my son” — she’s not going to leave Jones.

“Time’s up,” Jones can be heard saying. “Slap that b---h,” he says to another woman who begins hitting the crying victim. In a break in the punches Jones spits on her.

Jones was arrested after an investigation by the FBI along with police and sheriffs departments from Lexington, Richland Greenville, Newberry and Anderson, as well as the South Carolina Department of Correction and the Department of Probation and Parole.

But even from behind bars, Jones hold on some of his victims was unbroken.

While Jones was in jail, his fiancée still had to ask him permission to eat — she was only allowed food brought to her by Cromer — and was still performing commercial sex to make money for Jones. She had met Jones while working at a bar, with just one class left to take before graduating college. Jones supplied her with heroin, Xanax and Ecstacy, Lydon said, and he would withhold the drugs until she earned enough.

The abuse escalated after she gave birth to their child. In March 2022, while on the phone with Jones, she suffered a fatal overdose. In a jail recording read in court, Jones could be heard berating her as she died.

“Speak up b---h when I’m talking to you,” Jones said. As she lay dead, Jones sent her threatening texts from inside the jail.

Addressing the court, Jones defended his actions, saying that he was jealous because he thought she was with another man. Jones said that her death had caused him to develop anxiety and led him to reflect on the pain that he had caused women.

“I never knew that she was taking her last breath. I loved her with my whole heart,” Jones said, as he asked the court to consider a lenient sentence so that he could work to earn money to pay an owed $65,000 in restitution and become an advocate for victims of sex trafficking.

In his statement, Jones choked back tears as he talked about his sisters, his mother and his children.

Many of Jones’ problems could be traced back to his alcoholic father, who beat and belittled his son, according to his attorney as well as members of Jones’ family who spoke at his sentencing. As a result, Jones said that he turned to crime at a young age and became addicted to drugs.

“He was scared, he put up walls and he tried to make himself a tough guy,” Milling, his attorney, said. “He didn’t have the family structure to overcome an abusive father. He didn’t have a support system to shield him from the abuse of the streets.”

But Lydon, who repeatedly ordered Jones to stop talking when he tried to interject during the sentencing, called Jones’ tears for his family “almost offensive.”

“Let the record be clear here, I don’t find you to be remorseful,” Lydon told Jones. Ordering an exhibit showing the bruised faces of some of his victims placed in front of Jones as she read her sentence, Lydon said, “You won’t spit on another woman for 40 years.”

“I don’t want to walk the same streets Eric Jones walks and I don’t want any young girls to cross his path,” Lydon said. “This sentence and every second of it is necessary to protect the public from this monster.”