PORT HUENEME : Parole Violator Gets Another Year in Jail in Prostitution Case
A Port Hueneme woman, arrested in August for allegedly forcing her 5- and 6-year-old sons into prostitution and using the money to buy drugs, was ordered to serve an additional year in prison because of a parole violation in a similar case, a Ventura County prosecutor said Monday.
Martha Jean Berry, 29, and her husband, Jack Herron, 46, were arrested at a Port Hueneme motel on Aug. 22 and booked on suspicion of committing lewd and lascivious acts, pimping and pandering.
Because the parole violation charge was pending against her at the time of her arrest, authorities could hold Berry without charging her in the case involving her two sons, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lela Henke-Dobroth said.
Henke-Dobroth, in charge of the district attorney’s child-abuse unit, said state parole officials last week found that Berry violated parole in a 1987 conviction involving the sale of her 12-year-old sister into prostitution.
She had been paroled after serving 2 1/2 years of her five-year sentence.
Berry is incarcerated at the Sheriff’s Honor Farm for women in Ojai.
Herron was not charged in the latest prostitution case and was released from Ventura County Jail.
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