There was no argument that Lionel L. Cauley accompanied a teenage girl half his age from her home in Miami to the Midwest, where he collected the money she made through prostitution.

But after hearing from the reluctant woman, now 18, a federal jury Thursday ruled Cauley’s actions didn’t rise to the level of a felony offense.

Cauley, 33, faced a charge of sex trafficking of children by force, fraud or coercion, after an undercover officer answered a personal ad his girlfriend placed on an online message board.

The pair had been working out of a Fort Wayne hotel, according to court testimony.

A jury of seven women and five men ended Cauley’s three-day trial with a verdict of not guilty after hearing from the alleged victim, a client and her friends.

Cauley’s girlfriend was 17 in November, when she was found working in Fort Wayne. She testified Wednesday that she had been living with friends in Miami’s South Beach area when she met Cauley and began a relationship. He told her he was from the Chicago area and in real estate, she said.

The couple soon embarked on a trip around the Midwest. On one trip to Fort Wayne, Cauley was arrested and charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated, prosecutors said.

Cauley’s girlfriend testified that she worked as a prostitute during the trip and that he asked her to make money that way to pay his attorney in the drunken-driving case.

Against a projection of the girl’s racy Internet solicitations, the government tried to make the case that the girl felt trapped in the relationship. Cauley kept all the money she made – “for safety reasons,” she testified Wednesday – and would have been angry had she kept the money.

He persuaded her to get a tattoo to show her devotion – “Lady Lionz,” a play on his name, emblazoned in black script across her chest – and got angry if she looked at men besides Cauley and her paying customers, she said.

Prosecutors also projected an image of the tattoo. In the photo, the woman stares at the camera with a heavy-lidded scowl and pulls apart white tank-top straps to show the large image on her upper chest. Part of the tattoo was a yellow crown, because, the girl testified, Cauley made her feel like a princess.

The alleged victim’s testimony Wednesday afternoon, however, was given reluctantly, and a federal prosecutor noted during closing arguments it came only after the woman was compelled to appear by a subpoena.

The alleged victim did not appear at the conclusion of the trial Thursday. The woman’s profession and reluctance to testify was not an indication of a lack of credibility or truthfulness, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Miller Lowery told the jury during her closing arguments.

“He is nearly twice her age; he has nearly twice the life experience of her,” she said. “She’s an easy target for the coercive influence of an older man.”

Attorneys for both sides played recorded phone calls Cauley made to the woman from jail, during which she told him she still had feelings for him and would not say anything to convict him.

Cauley’s attorney, Linda Wagoner, said the alleged victim felt she had been led by federal prosecutors into incriminating testimony. When Cauley and the girl met, she already was frequenting strip clubs in South Beach and possibly prostituting herself, Wagoner said.

“This was a lifestyle she had embarked upon before he had ever met her,” she said.

Wagoner called the woman’s credibility into question. Among the witnesses called earlier in the trial was a middle-aged, Chicago-based truck driver who continues to send the alleged victim money, which she told him she needed to get away from her boyfriend – Cauley.

“She’s back to her old tricks, and she’ll probably always be up to her old tricks,” Wagoner said. “It’s sad, it’s sad for her.”

aturner@jg.net