A 26-year-old Lincoln woman who allowed a teenage girl to be prostituted out of her apartment went to prison for it Tuesday.
Kayla Holt’s sentence was just a year shy of the eight-year maximum that Deputy Lancaster County Attorney Chris Turner had sought on the charges: keeping a place of prostitution involving a minor, child abuse and contributing to the delinquency of a child.
Holt had pleaded guilty.
In 2016, she lived at an apartment near 16th and Garfield streets and agreed to allow a 17-year-old runaway to meet people answering an online ad for an escort in her apartment and have sex with them for money. According to Holt, others had arranged it and she wasn’t around much of the time.
But, in court documents, police say she collected money from the girl afterward.
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“To say that Miss Holt has exercised bad judgment would be a colossal understatement,†her attorney, Matt Catlett, said at her sentencing.
Before learning she would get seven years in prison plus another two years and three months on post-release supervision, Holt told Lancaster County District Judge Darla Ideus she was sorry.
But the judge called Holt’s role in what happened significant.
“You abused a vulnerable child in a terrible, terrible way, and you did it solely for your financial gain,†Ideus said.
She said the victim said of all the people involved she felt that Holt had hurt her the most.
“She made me feel like an object, not a human being,†the judge said, quoting the victim.
Holt also will have to register as a sex offender.
Hours later, co-defendant Kimberly Wheeler entered a plea deal that dropped her charge of pandering to aiding and abetting solicitation of prostitution for someone under 18.Â
When an undercover police officer went to the Garfield Street home last summer, Wheeler answered the door, collected money and showed him to the 17-year-old, Turner said.
Wheeler's June arrest sent her to prison for violating parole. She'll be released from the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women in York on Tuesday, and Ideus set her bond in the new case at $50,000.
A third woman, Jacqueline Stebbins, remains jailed on three counts of pandering in the same case. Stebbins is accused of posting ads of the 17-year-old online and receiving pictures of a 14-year-old girl for the purposes of advertising, according to court documents.Â
Nichole Manna contributed to this report.
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