Source: Ulf Wittrock / EyeEm / Getty
Man Gets 12 Years In Prison For Pimping Sixth Grader
A Brooklyn criminal who posed as a mother looking for a babysitter to lure his victim was sentenced Friday to 12 years in prison.
Anthony Charles, 24, and co-defendant William McNeil, who previously pleaded guilty, trafficked the teen girl over the course of 11 months beginning in June 2015, authorities said. According to The NY Post, Charles lured a Manhattan sixth-grader with the promise of a babysitting gig on facebook then sexually assaulting her and forced her into prostitution. When the girl arrived at McNeil’s Brooklyn apartment for the position, the defendants threatened her at gunpoint, sexually assaulted her, then pimped her out.
The two grown men forced the teen to perform sex acts in cars and hotels, using flattery and violence to keep her in line. She was raped four to seven times a day, and when her family and friends found out, they ostracized her.
The victim choked up as she read an emotional statement in Manhattan Supreme Court on Friday.
“They took away my virginity, my dignity, my freedom, my happiness and most importantly, my childhood,” she read from a piece of paper she clutched in her hands. “I never understood how people can hear you cry for help and not do anything.”
“What happen to me broke me forever,” she said, her voice cracking. “I felt disgusting. I felt dirty all the time. It was all types of men even doctors and teachers.”
The victim says she grew so depressed that she considered suicide.
Charles, who was convicted at trial of sex-trafficking and promoting prostitution, mumbled a half-hearted apology before Justice Gilbert Hong handed down his sentence. The judge said Charles faced a maximum of more than 50 years.
McNeil, 24, pleaded guilty to one count of sex-trafficking as part of a plea deal and was sentenced to five years in prison.
“The horrific violence and coercion committed against this 13-year-old child was not enough to break her spirit,” said Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. in a statement.
“She took the stand to testify in an act of extreme courage, bravely articulating the months of torture she endured at the hands of these heartless traffickers. The story of this profoundly courageous survivor shows us that in the safest big city in America, child sex trafficking still persists,” Vance said.
Good riddance!