Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark today announced that a Bronx man has been
sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to Attempted Sex Trafficking of young
girls he pimped on the website Backpage. The girls engaged in prostitution in Bronx hotels and
other locations on numerous occasions.
District Attorney Clark said, “The defendant preyed on vulnerable young girls, treating
them as a commodity and profiting from their degradation. Now he will serve eight years in
prison for ruining the lives of these children.”
District Attorney Clark said the defendant, Miguel Benitez, 29, of East 230 Street, was
sentenced today to eight years in prison followed by five years post-release supervision by
Bronx Supreme Court Justice Robert Neary. The defendant will also have to register as a sex
offender. He pleaded guilty to Attempted Sex Trafficking on October 11, 2017.
According to the investigation, in February of 2016, Benitez sexually advertised a 12-
year-old girl and a 13-year-old girl on the website Backpage. The defendant induced the girls
to engage in sexual conduct on several occasions with various individuals. A female co-defendant,
Desheen Evans, 35, of Brooklyn drove the girls to two Bronx hotels and rented the
rooms in her name. Evans was sentenced to two consecutive terms of one-and-a-third to four
years on May 17, 2017 after pleading guilty to two counts of Conspiracy.
District Attorney Clark thanked Detective George Munoz of the NYPD Child
Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force, under the supervision of Inspector James Klein of the NYPD Vice Enforcement Division, and Detective Gloria Chavez of the NYPD
Major Case Squad, for their assistance in the case, as well as Assistant District Attorney
Meagan Powers of the Public Integrity Bureau and Analyst Hubert Olszewski of the Crime
Strategies and Case Enhancement Unit.
No comments:
Post a Comment