Man charged over kid porn, chained woman

When authorities searched Ryon Travis’ Detroit home on separate occasions last month, they stumbled on a shocking scene.

Three women inside who he claimed were his wives; nearby was a cellphone with multiple sexually explicit images involving young children, according to federal court documents. Then, in another probe, a 25-year-old woman was found chained to a stripper pole in the living room — a padlock at the neck.

Those finds eventually led investigators to charge Travis — a jobless father of seven not in his custody — with producing, transporting and possessing child pornography as well as sex trafficking, court records show.

Travis was arraigned Monday in U.S. District Court before Magistrate Judge Steven Whalen. A not-guilty plea was entered on the charges — some of which could land him behind bars for up to 30 years.

The case started March 2, when West Bloomfield Township police executed a search warrant at his home in the 16000 block of Tuller on Detroit’s west side for fraud related to an identity theft case involving a “significant amount of money over $50,000,” according to court filings.

Officers seized two cellphones on a living room table the women there said belonged to him; when examining one, “police saw images of child pornography,” the criminal complaint read.

Authorities allege some of those images depict a man engaged in a sex act with a “very young” or prepubescent girl lying on a distinctive blue and white sheet seen on a bed at Travis’ house. The child’s face was visible in some pictures but not others.

As a result of the images, Homeland Security officials started investigating.

During a second search conducted March 21, authorities found a stripper pole in the living room and a woman — “Adult Victim One” — chained at the neck with a padlock, according to court filings.

Once freed, the 25-year-old told investigators she had lived with Travis and others for two years. He forced her and the women to have sex for money at the house while advertising their services online, officials said.

The scheme worked like this, authorities allege: Men responded to the ads, paid up-front and, once introduced to whoever was available, selected a woman for a “commercial sex date.”

The 25-year-old claimed if she or others refused to dance or perform the sex acts, Travis would become violent with them. The woman tried to escape, which is why she had been chained up for about two weeks.

Besides that, the woman told investigators she handed over her monthly $700 disability check to Travis, who also dictated when she ate and slept.

During the March 21 search, Travis told investigators the woman was chained because he was about to “get freaky with her.”

When asked about the production of child porn, Travis said he was familiar with the images but denied taking the pictures. He also claimed the girl pictured was his daughter. Yet when asked her name and where she could be found, he replied “that was confidential and also refused to provide the child’s mother’s name or provide an address where she was located,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Woodward said during his detention hearing March 23.

The indictment identifies the child involved only as Minor Victim One and lists her birth year as 2010.

If found guilty of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, Travis faces a maximum 30 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office could not be reached for comment Monday.

Travis’ attorney, Stacey Studnicki, who didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Monday night, said in court that her client works in painting and construction. But Woodward said Travis declined to provide proof of employment.

Also at the detention hearing to decide bond, Woodward argued that a brutal sexual assault of an extremely young child was memorialized on Travis’ phone, which meant “the weight of the evidence that he is a danger is extremely strong” and urged he stay in custody.

Magistrate Judge Mona Majzoub agreed and denied bond.

“I don’t understand how you could have been present at a search in your home on March 2 where you know that phones were taken and were going to be searched, and by the 21st, you have chained a woman against her will, in your home, knowing that agents were looking at you,” she said. “That makes no sense.”

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