Brothel Madam Fights To Get Adopted Daughters Back
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A woman who ran a brothel with her teenage daughter wants her two adopted daughters back, and she is going to court to get them.
And a published report says she has been getting help in the process from a retired judge.
As WBBM Newsradio's Regine Schlesinger reports, Kimberly Miniea, 51, has been arrested multiple times on charges of prostitution ever since opening her own brothel in 1987.
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Most recently, she was arrested in December 2010 on charges of pandering for running a house of prostitution in Berkeley. That arrest followed an undercover operation, in which a female Cook County sheriff's officer answered an ad in a local magazine searching for local women to work at the brothel.
Afterward, Miniea's two young adopted daughters were taken away and placed in foster care. She had gotten them back months earlier after being sentenced to two years' probation for a 2009 arrest, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Helping Miniea in her effort is retired Cook County Judge James M. Bailey, now 77, who was arrested in the 2009 raid, the Sun-Times reported. He was quietly released with no criminal charges, the newspaper reported.
Then, after Miniea's 2010 arrest, the Sun-Times reported Bailey wrote a letter to the sentencing judge calling Miniea an "excellent parent" and an "excellent candidate for extension of probation." Criminal Court Judge Kenneth Wadas said he never saw the letter, the newspaper reported.
But in sentencing Miniea for the 2010 arrest, Wadas extended her probation, and added 240 hours of community service and an order for alcohol treatment, the Sun-Times reported. Still, Juvenile Court Judge Richard Stevens stripped Miniea of her guardianship for the two girls, the newspaper reported.
Miniea also called Bailey her "platonic boyfriend," but Bailey told the Sun-Times he only maintained an attorney-client relationship with Miniea.
Court records unveiled by the Sun-Times indicated that it was also Bailey who gave Miniea legal advice when she filed to take guardianship of the girls.
Also in court records, Miniea said she had used cash from her prostitution operation to "buy" at least one of the two girls from a heroin addict who had worked for her at one time, the Sun-Times reported.
Miniea gained national notoriety in 2007 when her 17-year-old daughter, Kim Petersen, was arrested for helping her run the brothel, the newspaper reported.
On Feb. 29, Judge Stevens is set to hear testimony on a motion by Miniea to get her daughters back, according to the Sun-Times.
