LOS ANGELES — An aspiring actress claims she was held prisoner for four months by a man who has background as a sex offender.
Human trafficking, in any form, is a serious crime. All across the world, women are captured, confined, drugged and then sold. But there are adult women who enter into a world of drugs and prostitution of their own accord, and it is their right to do so.
Was Satara Stratton one of those women or was she a victim as she claims?
Stratton. 25, was a small town girl from Chattanooga, Tenn., with big aspirations. She wanted to be a movie star and a film director so she packed her bags and left her hometown to seek super stardom in Los Angeles.
From there things get murky.
Satara Stratton appeared in a few films under the name Satara Silver but also racked up a police rap sheet. She frequented Santa Monica Boulevard, at known drug hangouts, and was arrested a number of times.
Her once beautiful looks rapidly deteriorated after she became a heroin addict.
Her mother Sharon Stratton says that her daughter lost touch around Thanksgiving 2011 and she blames all her daughter’s woes on a convicted sex offender named Paul Constantinescu, 45, and on another incident in which she claimed that someone extorted money from her daughter.
Constantinescu is certainly no angel but Stratton seemed to like him and spent time willingly with him.
She claims he dropped her off Cedars Sinai Hospital in Beverly Hills in March 2012 because she asked him to, but her story seems to have later changed a number of times.
She says that he shot her up with drugs which caused her to become a drug addict, however based on her numerous mug shots, her drug issues started well before the four months she claims she was in captivity.
She also claims he kept her in a hole in the wall and said,
He carved out a hole in the wall and would stuff me in it
and said he took her to a series of motels.
Then, according to NBC Los Angeles, she said,
We were running out of money. Police were on us. I could not take it anymore.
Adding to the confusion, her mother claims that Constantinescu abducted her daughter four separate times and worked with others to groom her for sale, drug her and keep her in captivity.
Her mother even claims that one time she was able to put her daughter in a drug rehab but that Constantinescu got her out.
One person who claims to know her said she danced nude to support herself, became homeless and prostituted herself. He was so upset at what he considered to be lies told by Stratton that he published a e-book.
Stratton seems to have recovered and had a small part in the 2013 television series Being Mary Jane.