Parents Arrested on Suspicion of Prostituting Son

A Ventura County couple have been arrested on suspicion of selling their 5-year-old son for sex and using the money to buy drugs, an Oxnard detective said Thursday.

Detective Ed Neitzel said he knows of cases in which parents forced their teen-age children into prostitution, “but nothing anywhere this young.”

Martha Jean Berry, 29, and her husband, Jack Herron, 46, were arrested at a Port Hueneme motel Wednesday and booked on suspicion of committing lewd and lascivious acts and pimping and pandering.

Berry, in a telephone interview from the Sheriff’s Honor Farm for women in Ojai, said the accusations are untrue.

“It’s a lie,” said Berry, a native of Arkansas. “I’m a Christian. I would never do that.”

Moreover, Berry said, “I never, never use drugs.”

Neitzel said Oxnard police began their investigation of the couple early last month after receiving a tip that they were offering their child for prostitution.

“I think we have enough to go to trial, and I think we have enough to convict them,” he said.

The detective said police suspect that the child was forced to have sex with a man early in July and was used for other sex acts as well.

He declined to discuss evidence.

Lela Dobroth, supervisor of the district attorney’s sexual assault unit, said a decision had not been made on whether to file charges.

Berry’s three children--age 5, 4, and 8 months--are in protective custody at a Ventura County foster home.

Herron was being held Wednesday in Ventura County Jail. He declined to talk to a reporter. A sheriff’s deputy said Herron was on probation for an unrelated offense.

The couple were arrested Wednesday morning at the Surfside Motel. Berry said her husband, a former Navy Seabee, was working in construction and helping the motel with repairs in exchange for free rent.

Berry, who has worked as a nurse’s aide and security guard, said her family and several relatives lived last year in a nine-room house in Ojai, which they rented for $400 a month. But a family squabble over rent led to the couple’s eviction.

She said a cousin with whom she had fought while in Ojai was the person who tipped Oxnard police. “It was a setup,” Berry said.

The couple moved into their Port Hueneme motel room about a month ago and had been staying in a $210-a-week kitchenette, a clerk said.

After they paid their first week’s rent with a welfare check, the couple were allowed to stay rent-free in exchange for Herron’s maintenance chores, the clerk said.

“They didn’t create any problems,” he said.

For the last three years, Berry’s life has been marked by run-ins with the law, she said.

While living in Oxnard in 1988, Berry said, she was convicted of lewd and lascivious conduct and sentenced to five years in jail.

At the time of the conviction, she said she was pregnant and was transferred to the Ventura County Medical Center, where she had her second child.

When the baby was taken from her hospital room, she said she was so lonely that she attempted to escape by sliding down bedsheets from her fourth-floor hospital window. She thought that she could make it because she stands only 5-foot-1 and is relatively light.

But the knotted sheets broke and she fell to the ground, fracturing her legs, Berry said.

Berry said she served 31 months and was married to Herron while in jail in 1988.

Police declined to comment on her conviction or jailhouse experiences.

Berry said she wants to see her children again.

“I love my kids,” she said.