MIAMI – A 13-year-old girl in foster care reported that a cunning man offered her and her friends a job to sell marijuana, and invited them to a Miami-Dade County home where he isolated her and raped her. Prosecutors later identified the man as a human trafficker.
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According to prosecutors, Rodney “Grinch” Poucely used marijuana and alcohol to lure kids who had been abused, neglected, or abandoned into a life of exploitation.
“These individuals know that the trauma foster care children have usually experienced makes them easier to manipulate and control,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a statement released on Thursday.
According to prosecutors, a 14-year-old girl also reported Poucely, 36, knew she lived in a foster home and approached her at a gas station in the Goulds neighborhood where he offered her marijuana in exchange for sex and asked her to recruit other girls.
County inmate records show Poucely has been at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center since Tuesday night. Police officers from different departments in Miami-Dade had put him there before.
County court records show he was 18 when Miami-Dade Schools police officers arrested him for attempted strong armed robbery, trespassing, battery, and a probation violation after North Miami police officers arrested him for battery.
Poucely was 26 when Miami Gardens police officers arrested him for marijuana and trespassing. He was 29 when Doral police officers arrested him for the grand theft of a vehicle.
On Thursday afternoon, he was facing 18 charges in three pending cases. The two cases were related to investigations by the State Attorney’s Office and the Miami-Dade County Sheriff’s Office.
When he was recently arrested, Poucely had a pending case for an organized scheme to defraud, four counts of fraudulent use of personal identification, and six counts of fraudulent use of a credit card.
In one of the new cases, he faces charges of attempted sexual battery on a helpless victim, promoting sexual performance by a child, kidnapping a child under 13 for lewd and lascivious acts, and custody interference.
In the second case, Poucely faces charges of human trafficking, lewd and lascivious battery, and custody interference.
Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Carlos Gamez is presiding over the three cases.