#FreeCyntoiaBrown: The child sex slave jailed for killing her abuser

Matt Agorist
Free Thought Project
Wed, 22 Nov 2017 14:45 UTC

Cyntoia Brown

Cyntoia Brown was born into a family in which her mother and her grandmother were all sex trafficked, repeatedly raped, and abused. Brown was only a child the first time her 'owner' Kutthroat would pimp her out to pedophiles who had their way with her. She is now in jail for life for killing one of those pedophiles. #FreeCyntoiaBrown

With all the recent attention given to Hollywood's sexual predators, Brown's story has garnered the attention of high profile celebrities like Rihanna and Kim Kardashian West who are bringing new light to the dark story surrounding Brown's life.

"The system has failed. It's heart breaking to see a young girl sex trafficked then when she has the courage to fight back is jailed for life! We have to do better & do what's right. I've called my attorneys yesterday to see what can be done to fix this. #FreeCyntoiaBrown," Kardashian wrote.

"did we somehow change the definition of #JUSTICE along the way?? cause..... Something is horribly wrong when the system enables these rapists and the victim is thrown away for life! To each of you responsible for this child's sentence I hope to God you don't have children, because this could be your daughter being punished for punishing already!#FREECYNTOIABROWN #HowManyMore," wrote Rihanna.

At the age of 16, Brown was thrown in prison for life because she killed a child predator who bought her for sex and who she thought may try to kill her. The man she killed was a Nashville, Tennessee, real estate agent Johnny Mitchell Allen. As the Associated Press reports:

He drove her back to his house where his strange behavior frightened her and made her want to escape. When she couldn't sneak away, she said she wanted to nap. He lay down with her but didn't fall asleep. He kept getting up and standing over her. She became more panicked, convinced something was going to happen to her. Finally, she shrugged off his advances and, as he rolled over, she took a gun from her purse and shot him once in the head.

Because of Tennessee law in 2004, Brown was tried for murder for acting as a 'child prostitute.' This injustice was pointed out in a 2011 documentary by Filmmaker Dan Birman, who spent seven years documenting Brown's case and noted how a child can not be a prostitute.

In the film, Brown explains her abuse and how it made her paranoid.

"She was picked up by a 43-year-old man." Birman said. "Cyntoia was 16 years old."

"We started the conversation," Birman said. "This is a young girl who's at the tail end of three generations of violence against women."

"She had no chance," Birman said.

In her 2004 trial, Brown explained how there was always a gun being pointed at her. She was being hit, choked and dragged. Derri Smith, the Founder of End Slavery TN, shared the perspective with FOX 17.

"She did kill someone," Smith said. "She deeply regrets it, but she was a child and she was being exploited."

Briman's film exposed the horrid injustice that is charging a child with prostitution. It helped to change the law for children like her and now no one younger than 18 can be charged with prostitution.

"[There's] no such thing as a child prostitute or a teen prostitute," Smith said. "I think we've had to have a cultural mind shift."

However, it is too late for Brown. If Brown's case were tried today, the court would not have presented her to the jury as a child prostitute. Instead, she'd be treated as a child human trafficking victim-thus the reason for the newly coined hashtag #FreeCyntoiaBrown.

There is now a dedicated group of people who are working to free Brown. According to FOX 17, these people want the Governor and the Parole Board to really look at the unique factors of her case. Unique factors like the work she's done behind bars for years, long before anyone floated the idea of clemency.

Brown's pro bono attorney said Brown is shocked about the outpouring of national support for her.

"I talked to Cyntoia about noon today," attorney Charles Bone said. "She's very shocked and surprised and thankful as we all are for the interest of these celebrities. In today's world, we never know...when you're going to do a story that lights a fire."

"Just to see all the people and all the different organizations who believe in me and who want to stand up for me, it's humbling and mind-blowing," Brown said.

The prosecutor responsible for getting Brown sentenced to life in prison feels differently, however. Prosecutor Jeff Burke says her supporters have it all wrong and that she was a vile prostitute who deserves to be in prison.

"There has been a group of people who have wanted to make Ms. Brown a victim and a celebrity since this happened," Burke said. "She was not 'trafficked' nor was she a 'sex slave.' It's not fair to the victim and his family that the other side of this case is so seldom heard."

Burke noted during the trial that Brown killed Allen so she could steal from him as after she killed him, she took his pants which contained his wallet. Newsweek also agrees with Burke, running the story on Wednesday titled, CYNTOIA BROWN WASN'T A VICTIM, STOLE MONEY AFTER KILLING JOHNNY ALLEN: PROSECUTORS.

However, the prosecutors completely glossed over the fact that this was a child who'd been held captive by a man named Kutthroat who forced her to have sex with adults and physically and emotionally abused her. He also regularly choked, beat and raped her.

"He would explain to me that some people were born whores, and that I was one, and I was a slut, and nobody'd want me but him, and the best thing I could do was just learn to be a good whore," Brown told a judge in 2012 during an appeal hearing.

According to Burke, paying a slave trader to have sex with a child-who's been enslaved her entire life-makes one a victim and the psychologically damaged child who kills a man she thought was going to kill her is the aggressor. We disagree.

If you also disagree with the prosecution, please share this article with the hashtag #FreeCyntoiaBrown so her story can be told and so that she may one day be free again.

Comment: Before you start baking a file into a cake.

The Petitioner[Cyntoia] waived her Miranda rights and gave a statement to police in which she said that on the night of August 6, 2004, she was walking near a Sonic Drive-In when the victim, whom she did not know, picked her up in his truck. Id. He drove her to the Sonic, they ordered food, and the victim offered to let her spend the night at his home. The Petitioner accepted the victim's offer, and they went to his house. at *9. There, the victim showed the Petitioner some guns, and they got into bed together. Id. The victim whispered to and touched the Petitioner and reached underneath the bed. Id. The Petitioner thought the victim was reaching for a gun, so she pulled a .40 caliber handgun out of her purse and shot him. at *10. She took money out of the victim's wallet and two of his guns, drove his truck to the Walmart parking lot, and had someone drive her to the hotel where she was later arrested. The Petitioner denied that she was a prostitute or that she had sex with the victim.

Now, let's see how they found the body:

The nude victim was lying face-down on the bed in a large pool of blood, and his "hands were beneath his face, his fingers 'kind of partially interlocked,'" as if he had been sleeping. Id. at **4, 15. An autopsy revealed that he had been shot in the back of the head and that he did not have any defensive wounds.

Hrrm. What did she say on her first attempt to appeal?

After our supreme court denied the Petitioner's application for permission to appeal, she filed a timely pro se petition for post-conviction relief based, in pertinent part, on the denial of the effective assistance of counsel and newly discovered evidence "that Fetal -2- Alcohol Syndrome played a part in [her] actions on the night in question." The postconviction court appointed counsel, and counsel filed an amended petition, maintaining that the Petitioner received the ineffective assistance of counsel and alleging that her life sentence was unconstitutional.

And the story gets more detailed:

The Petitioner testified that if she had testified at trial, she would have stated the following: Months before she killed the victim, the Petitioner ran away from her adoptive parents' home.

She was staying with different people in Nashville and using drugs and alcohol. In July 2004, she met "Cut Throat," who was twenty-four years old, and began using cocaine and staying in a hotel with him. At first, "Cut" was nice to her. However, he began verbally and physically abusing her. He also sexually assaulted her and made her prostitute herself.

The Petitioner had to give the money she earned to Cut. She said that he was violent to her, that he almost killed her one time by choking her, and that she was scared of him. The Petitioner testified that on the day of the victim's death, she was "pretty sure" she was using drugs because "[t]hat is all I ever did." She said, "Cocaine definitely, I probably smoked some weed too." The Petitioner left the hotel and started walking toward the Sonic.

The victim stopped his truck and asked if she needed a ride and was hungry. The Petitioner got into his truck, and the victim parked at the Sonic. He asked her if she was "up for any action," meaning he wanted to pay her for sex, and the Petitioner told him that she would have sex with him for $200. The victim offered to pay her $100, and they ultimately agreed that he would pay her $150. She said that the victim was "an old Caucasian man" and that she thought he was about fifty years old. However, he turned out to be "forty-something."

Another interesting document.

Particularly:

The detectives' interview of the defendant was recorded on videotape, and this recording was played for the jury at trial. At the beginning of the interview, the defendant gave her name as "Cyntoia Denise Mitchell" and her date of birth as January 29, 1985. Based on this information, the detectives had the defendant arraigned as an adult;

Did she present herself to the victim as being 19? That would change the details of the article just a bit.

Well, in the end, every person has to decide for themselves what they are going to believe.