Man says women kidnapped and forced him into sex work: court docs

HARRIS COUNTY, Texas (KTRK) — Three people are facing charges after a north Harris County man says he was kidnapped at gunpoint and forced to have sex by a woman who identified herself as “Cookie.”

The victim, who asked not to be identified, said he was held for almost a week before he managed to escape.

“It was really ghetto,” he said. “It was scary.”

The ordeal began Oct. 18, according to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, when the victim was approached by Esmeralda Pena, who he describes as a friend.

“She said that she had a job for me, like, she was gonna help me make some money ’cause I didn’t have a job,” he told Eyewitness News.

He said Pena took him to the Regency Inn on Cypress Station near FM 1960.

It’s there he met the woman he says calls herself “Cookie,” although deputies say her legal name is Herbinique Forest.

He said Forest signed him up for an escort website and told him he’d have to have sex with men for money. Court documents say she assaulted him when he refused.

“It was a lot of crackheads, like a lot of them,” he said. “Like a lot of sketchy homeless people.”

The next day, he said he saw an opportunity to escape and returned to his apartment.

Four hours later, investigators say a doorbell camera shows Pena and Forest at the victim’s door with an armed man, later identified as Nickson Simmons.

Investigators say the video shows the trio forcing the victim into a car at gunpoint.

“Cookie started beating me, and she was like, ‘Do not ever leave again.’ Like, if I ever leave, like, she’ll blow my brains out,” the victim said.

For the next six days, he said he was beaten, plied with drugs, and forced to solicit men in a Ross parking lot. He said he ultimately only slept with one man.

“I knew that if I made them money, they would keep making me work for them, they would keep me around. So I’d just try not to sleep with anybody,” he said.

Even so, he said the experience was draining and that at one point, he wished his captors would make good on their threats.

“Like a couple days in, I kind of wanted her to kill me. Like, I told her to kill me, like, just get it over with,” he said.

In the end, he said it was his aunt who saved him.

Despite near constant surveillance, he said he finally managed to text her Oct. 24 on a phone he’d hidden from his abductors and that she picked him up from the Ross parking lot.

All three suspects are charged with aggravated kidnapping and remain in the Harris County Jail. The criminal investigation is ongoing.

For news updates, follow Luke Jones on Facebook, X and Instagram.