PORTLAND, Maine — In a surprising twist Monday, a man arrested for allegedly convincing a 20-year-old Portland woman to go on a sightseeing trip to Boston — then attempting to coerce her into prostitution — told a federal judge he didn’t understand what was going on at a hearing at which he was expected to change his plea to guilty.
As a result, Fritz “Frank” Blanchard, 29, of Boston will likely go to trial in June. Blanchard is charged with transportation in interstate commerce for prostitution and faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Torresen presided over a change-of-plea hearing in Portland, where Blanchard was expected to plead guilty.
But during otherwise routine preliminary questioning in which Torresen asked Blanchard if he understood why he was in court, he told her, “No.”
The defendant told the judge he didn’t understand what, if anything, federal prosecutors would offer him in a plea deal in exchange for a guilty plea.
His attorney, Robert Andrews, stopped Blanchard short of going further and advised him “against disclosing any discussions we’ve had with the government.”
Andrews told Torresen he had spoken to his client previously and thought Blanchard was prepared to plead guilty Monday.
“If you’re uncomfortable pleading guilty to this charge straight up [without any promises of a recommended sentence], then what we’ll do is schedule this case for trial,” Torresen said.
After the hearing, Andrews told the Bangor Daily News he doesn’t “have any comment” on whether he was surprised by Blanchard’s comments in court.
“It sounds like Mr. Blanchard wants a trial and there’s a trial scheduled in June,” he said.
Andrews said he will continue to represent Blanchard in court.
In what police say is a chilling tale that spotlights the increasing threat of human trafficking in Maine, Blanchard and an accomplice allegedly approached the victim while she was out walking in Portland in late March 2013.
That accomplice, Samuel Gravely, 27, of Portland, pleaded guilty to one count of transportation in interstate commerce for prostitution in November for his role in the incident.
Gravely, who also went by the name “Bigs,” and Blanchard struck up a conversation with the local woman and invited her to go sightseeing and shopping in Boston, authorities say. When the victim agreed, investigators say the two men picked up two other women, ages 23 and 17, at the Portland Travelodge hotel on their way to Massachusetts.
According to the affidavit filed by Special Agent Anthony Castellanos of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Blanchard, who also went by the nickname “Shake,” then reserved a hotel room in Boston for the group.
“The three women went up to room 287. While in the hotel room, [the 17- and 23-year-old females] told [the victim] she needed to get ready,” Castellanos wrote, in part. “When [the victim] asked what she needed to get ready for, [the other females] asked her if ‘Bigs’ had told her anything yet. … [The other females] also said to each other, ‘Should we tell her?’”
The 17-year-old and 23-year-old then explained to the victim that she would be expected to prostitute herself, and the older woman texted Gravely to warn him that the victim was getting scared.
“Shortly after this, Gravely appeared at the hotel room and asked [the victim] if she was scared,” Castellanos wrote. “[She] told Gravely she didn’t know what was going on and she thought they were going shopping and sightseeing. Gravely asked how she thought they were going to do all those things without her doing anything in return.”
Later — after Blanchard allegedly took the victim out to the streets of Boston, told her to try and get cars to stop for her, explained how much to charge for different sexual acts and demanded she bring all the money she made back to him — the victim allegedly feigned illness and asked to be brought back to the hotel.
When Blanchard brought her back to the hotel, she snuck down to the lobby and called Boston police, who responded and also contacted their counterparts in Portland, the agent wrote.
Castellanos wrote that investigators interviewed the manager of the Boston hotel, who “recalled seeing a young white female crying in the lobby between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.” and that he “helped her call police.”
The allegations against Blanchard and Gravely provide a window into what police and others in Maine have warned is an expanding human trafficking scene in the state.
In late March, two men and a woman were charged in a case in which police accuse the trio of taking a 19-year-old female victim from a teen shelter and holding her against her will in Gorham, where they allegedly forced her to “earn her keep” by having sex with strangers for money.
Last July, the FBI confirmed that three of the child prostitution victims discovered during a sweeping three-day, 150-arrest international sting operation came from Maine.
Annual calls to the national Polaris Project’s human trafficking hotline from Maine more than doubled from 2009-2010 to 2011-2012, and growing awareness of the threat motivated state lawmakers to move to address the issue in recent years.
Perhaps the highest profile of those efforts was a bill by Rep. Amy Volk, R-Scarborough, to help victims of human trafficking who are forced into prostitution to cleanse their record of those prostitution crimes, among other things.
The troubling trends also triggered the formation of the Greater Portland Coalition Against Sex Trafficking and Exploitation. The Portland social service agency Preble Street and a group of partners was additionally awarded a $400,000 U.S. Department of Justice grant last fall to develop a multifaceted bundle of services for people who are exploited in the sex trade.
