Within 2 days, 4 Beaufort Co. men jailed on child trafficking charges; SLED investigating
For the latest updates to this story, click here.
Four men from Beaufort County were arrested this week on charges of child trafficking, a very rare filing within Lowcountry courts. Authorities say the four cases are connected, but little else was known Wednesday about the circumstances of the alleged crimes.
In Beaufort County, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division applied felony sex trafficking charges Tuesday to Alban Bryan, 63, of St. Helena Island; Guy Frank Talley, 27, of Okatie; and William James Youmans, 34, of Beaufort. Bryan and Youmans were also charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, while Talley was accused of sexual exploitation of a minor in the second and third degree, offenses encompassing the creation, distribution and ownership of child sexual abuse material.
In Jasper County, Hardeeville police charged 49-year-old Beaufort resident Terrance Fields with trafficking of a minor on Monday. Chief of Police Sam Woodward confirmed the case was related to the other three arrests but deferred questions to SLED, whose personnel could not be reached Wednesday for additional details.
State law defines trafficking as any attempt to forcibly subject a victim to prostitution or involuntary servitude, not necessarily sexual in nature. The felony charge carries a maximum sentence of 30 years if the victim is underage.
This week’s slew of arrests comes three months after Port Royal resident Jaquan Duvall Barnes, already a convicted sex offender, was jailed for the same trafficking charge after Hardeeville police reportedly pulled him over to find a missing underage girl inside his car. Judicial officials believed he was the first person in the region to face the elevated trafficking offense, which was created in 2018 when a rewrite of state law added harsher penalties for cases with underage victims.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Barnes was still on the run following his escape from the Jasper County Detention Center earlier this week. SLED quickly took over the manhunt and assumed an investigation into how the inmate managed to slip away.
