A federal lawsuit accuses Virginia police of covering up a sex-trafficking ring in exchange for sexual services from the victims

The lawsuit accused five high-ranking police officers of being complicit in protecting a sex-trafficking ring.

• A federal lawsuit accuses police officers in Virginia of shielding a sex-trafficking ring for years.
• The suit says high-ranking officers worked against a lone detective looking into the operation.
• It says the detective resigned after agreeing not to pursue his investigation under threat.

A federal lawsuit alleges that several high-ranking police officers in Virginia's Fairfax County shielded a sex-trafficking ring from justice for years in exchange for sex from the victims.

The civil-rights attorney Victor Glasberg filed the lawsuit on behalf of a Costa Rican woman identified as "Jane Doe."

The lawsuit, seen by Insider, said five defendants who were on the force at that time — two supervisory officers, a police captain, a police lieutenant, and a chief of police — conspired to protect the traffickers.

The complaint said at least some of them "secured sexual services from trafficked women, and may also have extorted money from the ring's leadership."

It goes on to say they worked to undermine an investigation into the trafficking ring by a lone detective, William Woolf, and became hostile to him as he homed in on the illicit operation.

The lawsuit said Woolf's direct superior, a then-supervisory officer identified as Michael Barbazette, would disparagingly call Woolf a "social worker" and introduced strict restrictions on Woolf, such as requiring daily reports from him and denying overtime work.

"Police officials regularly derided the notion that trafficked women were victims, insisting instead that they were simply prostitutes willingly engaged in unlawful commercial activity," the lawsuit said.

The suit alleges that Barbazette and another supervisory officer, Jason Mardocco, would tip off the traffickers of impending police activity by telling them to take down online advertisements for commercial sex ahead of sting operations. Neither officer is still on the force.

The lawsuit says police superiors ignored Woolf's reports

The lawsuit alleges that when Woolf reported Barbazette's actions to his next immediate superior, a police captain named James Baumstark, he was told to stay quiet. Baumstark is also accused of...

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