An Odessa woman accused of allowing her young daughter to be raped over a three-year period in exchange for money was sentenced to 20 years in prison Monday.
According to court documents, Shirley Harmon, 40, pleaded guilty to abandonment/endangerment and was sentenced to the maximum term allowed under her plea agreement. She’s still facing trial on one count each of continuous sexual assault and human trafficking.
In January 2019, Child Protective Services received an anonymous tip a 5-year-old girl told someone she knew Gary Coleman Landreth, then 62, had sexually assaulted her. According to an Ector County Sheriff’s Office report, the girl repeated the allegations to investigators and a physical exam confirmed she’d been the victim of a sexual assault.
Landreth was arrested on suspicion of aggravated sexual assault of a child that same month. Six months later, he was indicted, along with the girl’s mother.
According to ECSO records, Harmon was indicted after an investigation revealed she’d accepted $400 from Landreth so he could have access to the girl.
According to court documents, Harmon was initially indicted on continuous sexual abuse of a child and abandonment/endangerment, but she was later re-indicted on those charges, plus an additional charge of continuous trafficking of persons.
According to the indictment, Harmon “intentionally and knowingly caused” Landreth to engage in sex acts with her daughter from August 2016 through January 2019 and she “knowingly received a benefit from participating in a venture involving the trafficking” of the child.
The indictment further accused Harmon of intentionally abandoning her daughter under circumstances that placed her daughter in “unreasonable risk of harm and under circumstances that a reasonable person would believe would place the child in imminent danger of death, bodily injury or physical or mental impairment.”
Landreth is going on trial next week in Ector County District Court on four counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, one count each of sex abuse of child continuous, human trafficking and injury to a child.
