A woman convicted last year of helping a Tennessee runaway come to Texarkana, Ark., to work as a prostitute was sentenced to nine years in prison Tuesday.
Ashley Elizabeth Hatfield, 29, was sentenced in Miller County to a six-year term of probation in April 2016 for transporting a minor across state lines for prohibited sexual contact, a conviction which requires sex offender registration. Since then, Hatfield has been arrested twice for failing to register as a sex offender.
Hatfield was sentenced to five years probation in January for failing to register as a sex offender and was re-arrested for repeating the same offense just a few months later. Probation officials filed motions to revoke Hatfield’s probations for transporting a minor and for failing to comply with sex offender registration requirements as well.
Hatfield pleaded guilty to failing to register as a sex offender at a hearing Tuesday before Miller County Circuit Judge Kirk Johnson. She also admitted to violating the conditions of her six-year probation for transporting a minor for prohibited sexual contact and her five-year probation for an earlier charge of failing to register as a sex offender.
Hatfield was arrested by members of the Texarkana, Ark., Police Department in August 2015 after they received information from investigators in Tennessee who were looking for a teen girl who had run away from home. a probable cause affidavit states. Investigators determined Hatfield had helped the girl leave her home to come to Texarkana to work as a prostitute. Both the teen and Hatfield were advertising prostitution services in Texarkana on backpage.com. TAPD officers arrested Hatfield after finding her and the teen runaway at a local Texarkana, Ark., motel.
