GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — For 11 months, she has attended every hearing, sitting quietly in the gallery of a Kent County courtroom, awaiting her turn to speak. 

On Monday, she got it.

“I feel like he deserves the strictest punishment just so he can’t get out and do this to anybody else,” Jonathan Didyk’s ex-girlfriend told a Kent County judge at his sentencing on prostitution-related charges.

Later, after the court sentenced Didyk to at least two years in prison — the harshest sentence available under a plea agreement — the girlfriend he trafficked for sex sat down with Target 8.

“I just want people to know,” she told Target 8, “there’s more (sex trafficking) out there than people think.”

She’s hoping her story will encourage other survivors to report their traffickers.

“I finally called my stepmom, and she said, ‘You know what he’s doing is wrong,’” she recalled of Nov. 10, 2023, the day her longtime boyfriend was arrested. “She was going to call Michigan State Police, and they would be at the hotel. She wanted to make sure I was really going to do it, make sure I was 100% ready to go, and I was.”

The survivor, who asked that Target 8 not identify by her name, said she was 16 when she met Didyk, who was 26 at the time.

Twenty years and three kids later, she said Didyk was looking for a way to make rent.

“He decided he wanted to post this ad on a site, and he was just getting messages all night long in response to this ad,” she explained, speaking to Target 8 in a conference room at the Kent County Victim Witness Unit.

Detectives said Didyk posted intimate pictures of her online, posed as her to set up dates at hotels, transported her to the meetups and pocketed the profits.

“I was just scared of him,” the survivor explained. “I didn’t know what he was going to say or what he was going to do. … (He’d be) screaming, yelling, throwing things, punching holes in the walls of the house.”

She said Didyk threatened that they wouldn’t be able to make rent or put food on the table if she didn’t go through with the dates.

“Even though there wasn’t a gun held to my head, I was still forced,” she said. “I still felt like I needed to do it to protect my kids, in order to not get hurt.”

Court records show Didyk prostituted her at least 15 times over nine months in 2023.

Ten hours after her stepmom contacted law enforcement in November 2023, Grandville police arrested Didyk, now 46, in the parking lot of the Rodeway Inn off Chicago Drive.

GRANDVILLE POLICE: ‘WE’RE HERE TO HELP’

“I think this is a good case that exemplifies what we’re trying to do to curb human trafficking in this area,” said Darin Rietman, deputy chief in Grandville. “We had a lot of things in our favor. We had a victim who was extraordinarily cooperative, a relative of the victim who also was cooperative with us, and they both provided us with initial evidence that we could use to get the suspect in custody in such a quick manner.”

Rietman said the timing of Didyk’s arrest was not typical, as most cases require search warrants and long waits for electronic evidence from telecommunications companies.

But Rietman hopes Grandville’s aggressive pursuit of justice on behalf of Didyk’s ex-girlfriend will encourage other survivors to report their traffickers.

“It takes a victim coming forward,” Rietman said. “I want them to feel comfortable doing that. We’re here to help.”

Rietman acknowledged that in decades past, police may have arrested those being trafficked, instead of those profiting behind the scenes.

“(Arrest) was a very realistic fear back in the day when we called it just prostitution,” he said. “Now, (we know) it’s like a forced prostitution, and it probably was back then. We just didn’t look at it that way. We are evolving. We are educating ourselves.”

Rietman said the Didyk case benefited, too, from the resources of the Kent County Sheriff’s Office’s human trafficking unit.

“We did bring them into our investigation because it’s a force multiplier for us as a police department,” said Rietman. “Bringing in another expert to get additional guidance, and also the task force comes with additional resources for the victims.”

Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker agreed that attitudes have changed markedly in recent decades.

“We’re much more knowledgeable in terms of what goes on in these types of relationships. Women who are engaged in this behavior are very often victims,” Becker said. “That’s not true in every case, but they’re often being pushed by somebody for a variety of reasons.”

Becker said historically, the criminal justice system may have handled the Didyk case differently.

“There’s much more of a focus now on the johns and the people … pushing the behavior.”

Indeed, Target 8 has learned that the criminal justice system is not finished with Jonathan Didyk.

DIDYK CHARGED IN CALHOUN COUNTY 

He’s also facing charges in Calhoun County for allegedly prostituting his girlfriend in the summer of 2023 at FireKeepers Casino near Battle Creek and a nearby hotel.

Detectives with the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi investigated the case.

According to court records, tribal police found 40 online advertisements for sexual encounters from 21 profiles, all of which contained intimate photographs of Didyk’s ex-girlfriend.

“I noted that many of the photographs were taken inside of a room at FireKeepers Casino and Hotel because I recognized the interior designs/carpeting,” wrote a detective in a probable cause affidavit.

Tribal police found electronic evidence through records obtained by Grandville police, as well as reservation records at FireKeepers.

They also interviewed Didyk’s former girlfriend.

“She participated in the sexual encounters because she believed she didn’t have any other options,” wrote the tribal detective on the case. “She is terrified of losing her children and/or not having a home for them to live in. She stated she did not want to sell her body for money, but they desperately needed money and Didyk is not employed. She also relayed Didyk had isolated her from family and friends, was in control of all the bills and everything was in his name.”

It’s not clear if a conviction in Calhoun County would necessarily add time to Didyk’s sentence, but Prosecutor David Gilbert told Target 8 they’re continuing to pursue the case nonetheless.