How Detroit couple ran prostitution and drug ring in basement — while the kids were home

For years, it was the perfect cover.

She was a working mom with two kids and a house of her own. He was a violent pimp who kept drug-addicted women in the basement, gave them cocaine, fentanyl and heroin on a plate, sold them for sex and beat them.

This house of horrors was located on a quaint street near the Grosse Pointe-Detroit border, just behind Ascension St. John Hospital on the city's east side. While two minor children lived upstairs with their mom and her boyfriend, the FBI says, women were being beaten, drugged and sexually exploited in the basement.

According to the FBI, the women were drug addicts, hopelessly and helplessly controlled by the sinister Detroit couple — until the victims spoke up.In U.S. District Court this week, Quiyemabi Summerlin, 45, of Detroit, was sentenced to 17½ years in prison for running a sex-trafficking ring and drug den that involved luring drug addicts into a basement, providing them with a steady supply of drugs, then forcing them to have sex with paying customers or risk getting their drugs cut off and suffering unbearable withdrawals.

Beatings. Rapes. Drugs — 'This was his way of life'

According to the FBI and victim impact statements, Summerlin kept all the money from the sex dates and, at times, beat the women to ensure their compliance. He also raped several of his victims, including one woman who recalled being "held down and raped while staring at the gun as a reminder of what would happen if I didn't lie there and allow him to take it."

She also recalled the "physical pain of guy after guy that he'd send in the basement to make his money" as being unbearable, explaining what happened if she refused a date.

"(Summerlin would) make you go through withdrawals and/or beat you into doing it anyways," the victim writes. "And he would be listening on a baby monitor to ensure you obeyed and weren’t keeping a single dollar for yourself.”

Federal prosecutors called his crimes "reprehensible."

"Summerlin exploited vulnerable women who were addicted to dangerous drugs to earn a profit for himself," Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sara Woodward and Tara Hindelang argued in court documents, stressing Summerlin turned the victims' struggles "into a business model."

"Knowing the effects of withdrawal, Summerlin withheld drugs to coerce the women he kept under his roof, in his basement, to perform commercial sex dates so that he could make more money," the prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo. "The physical agony and psychological trauma suffered by these women were of no consequence to Summerlin ... and Summerlin did not do it just one time, or to just one victim: This was his way of life, and he exploited numerous women for years."

In an unusual move, Summerlin's attorney, Christopher Sinclair, offered a brief, one-paragraph sentencing memo on his client's behalf, stating only that his client had pleaded guilty to three crimes, including sex trafficking, and that both sides had agreed that he would serve a 210-month sentence under the plea agreement. He asked the court to honor that agreement, and nothing else — which is different than most sentencing memos where defense attorneys talk about the person's background, personal history, or in many cases, ask for a more lenient sentence — known in legal circles as a downward departure.

There was none of that in this case: Just a guilty plea and an agreement to go to prison for 17½ years for crimes he committed for years.

But he didn't do it alone.

Mom with kids was his partner in crime

His partner in crime was his girlfriend, Samantha Gilliam, who also was charged in the case and pleaded guilty earlier this year to sex trafficking and running a drug operation out of her home.

According to court documents, Summerlin "did not think people would suspect anything was going on at the house because his girlfriend had a good job and had children." Authorities did not disclose what type of job Gilliam had.

Gilliam has not yet been sentenced for her crimes, which could send her to prison for life. However, if her boyfriend's sentence is any indication, she likely will get some leniency in exchange for admitting guilt and taking responsibility for her actions.

According to her plea deal, Gilliam admitted that she "knowingly and voluntarily" used her house from 2019-21 as a sex and drug-trafficking operation, where she and her boyfriend took advantage of female drug addicts to make money. Specifically, the couple knew the victims were addicted to heroin and that without it they would experience severe withdrawals, the agreement states. So, they would require the women to have sex with paying customers by withholding or threatening to withhold the heroin from them.

In her plea deal, Gilliam also admitted to witnessing her boyfriend sometimes beat the victims.

There were many.

FBI identifies 25 victims who were sex-trafficked in basement

While Summerlin pleaded guilty to trafficking three victims, the FBI says it identified 25 women who were extorted and abused in the couple's home.

According to court documents, here is how those victims came to light and what some of them told the FBI:

In April 2021, members of the Southeast Michigan Trafficking and Exploitation Crimes Task Force interviewed a victim who identified Summerlin as a violent pimp who provided crack cocaine and heroin to women working commercial sex dates for him. The victim provided Summerlin's telephone number, which was linked to more than 100 commercial sex advertisements, which included photos of different females.

The task force ended up identifying many women in the sex ads. Over the next several months, they would interview more than 10 women who all disclosed that they were being prostituted out of a basement on Berden Street in Detroit. Their stories were all the same: Summerlin was the pimp who gave them drugs. He lived upstairs with his girlfriend, kept all their money from their sex dates in the basement, and that his girlfriend knew what was going on as she sometimes collected the money from the victims when her pimp-boyfriend wasn't home.

More: Brazen thief admits to stealing from his boss: A sitting judge in Detroit

Children were home while prostitution was happening in basement

According to an FBI agent's affidavit, here's some of what the victims experienced and witnessed:

One women said she was locked in the basement for eight days, during which she had sex with strangers while Summerlin gave her heroin and crack cocaine.

Another stated that "Summerlin used drugs to keep the girls strung out and kept all oftheir money from the commercial sex dates."

Another said: "Sometimes Gilliam’s children were at the residence when commercial sex dates were happening."

In October 2021, a team of federal agents raided the home on Berden Street and found Summerlin with two women in the basement. They also found heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, Para-Fluorofentanyl, a scale, needles and a cutting agent.

Summerlin was arrested on Oct. 14, 2021. He has been in custody ever since.

'We can say old girl was on dope'

According to court documents, Summerlin referred to one of his victims as "little retard" and "retardo," and believed that he would beat the charges, allegedly telling his girlfriend that the government "don't got enough people" to testify at trial.

Prior to pleading guilty in April, Summerlin also talked with his girlfriend about trying to discredit the witnesses, allegedly telling her: "We can say old girl was on dope, she got this in her background.”

The two also had concocted a defense for Gilliam, "namely, that she was at work when the prostitution and drug dealing occurred in her home and that she did not witness anything."

The victims, however, told a different story.

'I'm forever traumatized'

In seeking a stiff punishment for Summerlin's crimes, prosecutors cited excerpts from the victims' impact statements.

One woman wrote of her fear that the people she loves will leave her "if they find out how disgusting, tainted and useless I feel I am.

"Each day is a struggle as I wrestle with the overwhelming fear that I will never reclaim my happiness or my sense of self,” the woman writes, adding she also struggles to have "healthy relationships" and show affection to her spouse because of Summerlin's actions.

Another woman wrote that Summerlin subjected her to "relentless torture day after day," and described the ordeal as an "unimaginable nightmare" that felt like she was "living in hell."

Pain. Fear. Helplessness. Hopelessness.

They all felt it.

"(Summerlin) used my weakness of having a drug problem to his advantage, lured me in with it and mentally and physically tortured me for months," one woman writes. "In many different ways, and for his actions, I’m forever traumatized.”

Contact Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: How Detroit couple ran prostitution and drug ring in basement — while the kids were home