Continued from October 2025 blog post

Anderson, during sentencing, gave a statement that lasted more than 30 minutes. In it, he called his conviction and sentence a “modern day lynching,” blaming the victim for lying and blaming lawyers for his defense.

Anderson, who maintained his innocence during trial and testified, said “people of power delivered vengeance not justice.” He said the prosecution and law enforcement didn’t do their jobs because he is innocent.

He referred to himself as a “normal husband, family man, soccer dad who loves his children.”

The teen, who was 17 at the time of the incidents on May 21 and 22, 2024, testified she was sexually abused by Anderson after he gave her alcohol and psilocybin mushrooms and held her in a hotel room to have sex with “multiple, different men” in exchange for money.

The victim, now 18, didn’t recall many details of the first night of her ordeal except that “bad things” happened, including being “raped” twice by Anderson. The teen recalled Anderson taking photos of her naked at the hotel on his cellphone. A woman, Tana Torres, was with Anderson and the teen during the incidents.

The teen said she had planned to try to see her friend who lived in Cedar Rapids but instead, “he sold me to multiple, different men.”

During these incidents, the teen had her phone and tried to contact her sisters and others for help. She never called the police because she was “scared,” she testified. Anderson told her “bad things would happen” if she did, she said. She also was worried about her outstanding warrant if she contacted police.

The teen said Anderson left the room when men arrived to have sex with her. Sometime on May 22, she got out of the hotel room while Anderson was away, but Torres and two men were there. She was rescued by a former youth service worker with Four Oaks. The teen had called him for help, and he and another woman called police.

Police testified investigators found Anderson’s DNA and the DNA of an unknown male in the teen’s underwear.

Torres, 50, of Cedar Rapids, who testified at trial, corroborated some of the teen’s testimony but recalled some portions differently, while admitting she had been intoxicated with liquor and drugs during the May incidents.

Torres was charged with human trafficking a minor, second-degree sexual abuse, conspiracy to commit a forcible felony and prostitution, but was offered a plea agreement if she testified truthfully about the events involving the teen.

She pleaded guilty to three charges of prostitution and conspiracy to commit prostitution, all aggravated misdemeanors. Torres was sentenced to up to eight years in prison.