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Jacksonville couple lived off money made sex trafficking child, plea agreement shows

Husband, wife plead guilty to child sex charges

Jacksonville couple accused of conspiring to sex traffic child

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A Jacksonville man pleaded guilty to conspiring to sex traffic a child and his wife pleaded guilty to possession of child sex abuse material, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.

Samuel Christopher Templeman, 46, and Deborah Lynn Templeman, 50, will be sentenced at a later date.

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Samuel Templeman faces a maximum penalty of life in federal prison, and Deborah Templeman faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison.

According to the plea agreements, in 2018, Samuel Templeman and the child victim began regularly using heroin and crack cocaine together. Also at that time, a pimp began directing the child victim to engage in sex acts in exchange for drugs.

In July 2019, a court terminated the Templemans’ custodial rights over the child victim and ordered them not to have any contact with the child. 

The child was then placed in foster care, from which the child ran away. In late August 2019, Samuel Templeman received over $25,000 in inheritance, which the Templemans used to entice the child to return to them, according to court documents.

By mid-October 2019, the Templemans had spent the entire inheritance, primarily on drugs for Samuel Templeman and the victim, court documents show.

According to the plea agreements, the Templemans would spend Deborah Templeman’s bi-weekly salary within one to two days and the rest of the month they lived off the money made from sex trafficking the child victim and the victim’s occasional panhandling. The Templemans spent most of that money on drugs and the rest on living expenses, according to court documents.

On December 11, 2019, a detective from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office went to Deborah Templeman’s place of employment in an attempt to locate the victim. While there, the detective overheard phone conversations in which Samuel Templeman told Deborah Templeman that he was taking the victim to a “date,” a common slang term for an appointment for the child to have sex for money, and that he would then come pick up Deborah Templeman. When Samuel Templeman later arrived at Deborah Templeman’s workplace, authorities arrested him and recovered the child victim.

Investigators looked through Deborah Templeman’s cellphone after getting a search warrant and found it contained sexually explicit images of the child victim. According to the plea agreement, Deborah Templeman admitted that she knew those images were stored on her phone.