Prosecuting pimps who sell kids for sex may seem like an open-🐼and-shut trafficking case — but not in New York.
Weak state laws are keeping traffickers out💎 of prison, and lawmakers are failing vulnerable kids by refusing to change th🎃em, prosecutors and cops told The Post.
New York is one of just three states — along with Alabama and Ohio — that requires attorneys to prove that an underage victim was forced, defrauded or coerced into prostitution to make a trafficking case, even though minors can’t legally consent to sex ꦕwith an adult.
As a result, dirtbags caℱn pimp out 12-year-old girls on Craig🌠slist and get off with a slap on the wrist if the victims can’t or won’t testify.
“We can bring other charges — we can bring promoting prostitution charges — but if it’s your first arrest and you’re looking at one to three years on that charge, you can end up with probation for what is essentially child rape for profit,” said Laura Edidin,꧟ chief of the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Human Trafficking Unit.
The state’s unusually high burden of proof often means the only witnesses who can prove the children weren’t willing participants are the victims themselves. And as survivors, advocates and law enforcement officials have explained in The Post’s three-part ♉series on the scourge of sex trafficking in New York City, the victims often don’t see themselves🧸 that way — or they’re simply too traumatized to take the stand.
“They don’t recognize themselves as victims. They loveಞ their pimp. They’re afraid that we can’t protect them — that something bad’s going to happen to them,” said Inspector Jim Klein, head of the NYPD’s Vice Enforcement Unit. “It’s hard. The DAs will tell you. The [assistant US attorneys] will tell you. It’s difficult to get these victims to cooperate.”
Some Albany lawmakers have been fighting an uphill battle in recent years to make prostitution of a minor a sex-trafficking charge — bringing it into line with the💧 federal definition — but the bills have repeatedly failed to clear the Assembly.
Opponents in the past🍸 have said they’re worried trafficking victims who help recruit other minors into “the life” will be prosecuted as well — but even a 2017 bill that expressly prohibited that u🍬nintended consequence died in the notoriously progressive Codes Committee.
With trends toward decriminalization and reducing the overall prison population, beefing up felonies is a tough se🌼ll to lefty lawmakers, pols say.
“We have a difference of minds about what that penalty should be,” said Assemblywoman Amy Paulin (D-Westchester) who authored the 2017 bill and an earlier 2015 iteration. “I would argue that we need a higher penalty for traffickers… I think the Assembly’s always very cautious about raising penalties, because they want to see an alignment in the penal code.”
Co🎀des Committee Chair Joe Lentol (D-Brooklyn) said he supports the concept of the bill, but that’s as far as he would go⛄.
“It sounds like something we should do to protect children . . . it’s just that the devi🔴l’s in the details,” he said.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie didn’t respond to a request for comment. One member of the committee told The Post that top Codes staffers believe sex trafficking of minors i꧟s “alread🐷y covered by other statutes.”
But those who actually have to put the 𒐪pimps behind bars say they don’t go far enough. “There’s no question there’s times there are cases we can’t make because we can only prove force, fraud or coercion through the testimony of the victim and they’re either in no condition to testify or their p🤡arent or guardian doesn’t want them to testify,” said Edidin.
Despite this roadblock, law enforcement offic🐬ials sayꦬ the city has come a long way in tackling sex trafficking in recent years.
Last February, the NYPD said it had restructured its Vice Unit — adding 25 more detectives to focus on sex trafficking in the city with an emphasis on busting johns and pimps rather than purported prostitu💦tes.
Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. says his own evolution on the subject mirrors this cultural ♛shift. He recalled the long line of 🔯women — handcuffed to one another — that often were led into court in the 1980s, when he was a young assistant in the DA’s office.
Now there’s a courthouse in Mid🌌town where all the prostitution cases are handled — and every case there is vieweꦍd as one of potential trafficking, he says.
“Our goal now is for working . . . to make ourselves available to the men and women, to really try to und꧃eཧrstand who is being trafficked and by whom,” Vance said.
“So that’s a c✃omplete 180 reversal on dealing with prostitution cases.”