EAU CLAIRE, Wisconsin (WEAU) – Two people accused of human trafficking first appeared in court on Thursday.
Mark Scoville and Catherine Ottinger were arrested Wednesday between Fairchild and Stanley by Eau Claire County Sheriff’s Deputies with the help of the Chippewa County Sheriff’s Office. Their arrests culminate in a three-year investigation.
Prosecutors say Ottinger tried to sell a child for sexual activity. She is accused of two crimes, trafficking a child and causing a child under 13 to see / listen to sexual activity.
Scoville faces 32 charges, including second-degree sexual assault and human trafficking.
A $ 5,000 cash advance was given to Ottinger on Thursday. Scoville received a $ 25,000 cash guarantee on Thursday.
He is due to appear in court on April 13.
The criminal complaint states that Scoville and Ottinger met through her then-boyfriend Charles Page, who died in 2019. Scoville and Page were friends.
The complaint states that Page and Scoville assaulted several women, several women and girls.
“The statement in the second-degree sexual assault section that is denoted in the criminal complaint is specific to sexual contact or sexual intercourse with an unconscious person, and the defendant knows he is unconscious,” Det said. Don Henning with the Eau Claire County Sheriff’s Office.
The criminal complaint also said that Page and Scoville trafficked women and girls, causing them to perform commercial sexual acts, offering them drugs in return.
“The qualifier for establishing a commercial sexual act is that the defendant received something in return and / or the victim received something of value,” Henning said. “And in this case, by magnification, the value element was drugs.”
He said the investigation initially began in 2018 as a case of drug trafficking around Fairchild.
“By means of obtaining information and information about several targets in the Fairchild area, they found out that there is a potential component of human trafficking or sex trafficking in the same residences involved in the alleged drug trafficking.” Henning said.
He said the drug component made this case unique.
“This is by far the largest case of human trafficking and sexual assault we have had in connection with a drug trafficking investigation in our county. We don’t see these two things intersecting very often in our community, “Henning said.
He said several law enforcement agencies worked on the case.
Scoville and Ottinger were arrested in 2019 and eventually released. Henning said prosecutors waited until recently to move forward while building a case. Arrest warrants were initially issued for Scoville and Ottinger on March 24, 2021.
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