15-yr-old girl who'd been missing for 6 months walks into police precinct after escaping from sex traffickers
STATEN ISLAND, NEW YORK: A teenage girl who had been missing for six months turned up at a Staten Island police precinct claiming that she had escaped sex traffickers on Friday, April 15. The girl, whose identity has not been publicly disclosed, was last seen on October 13, when she was 14 years old.
A law enforcement source confirmed that the girl from Queens entered the 121st precinct of the New York City Police Department in Staten Island. The 15-year-old told police that she had been drugged and sexually assaulted by the alleged traffickers. The girl's mother spoke about her teenage daughter's ordeal with kidnappers in detail in an interview with a news outlet. Quoting her daughter, she said, "They were holding her first in Brooklyn and then they passed her on to someone else… The only thing I know is that it was in New Jersey."
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The girl's mother told PIX11 News that her daughter and two other girls were kept in separate rooms and the victims were "locked up, drugged up" and had "men coming in and out" to sexually abuse them. The teen's mom explained, "The girls, she don't know the girls, because they always had them separated." The mother further added the kidnappers "threw her out of the car on Staten Island and threatened her" but her daughter managed to escape.
After escaping, the girl was spotted running through the borough's streets and eventually asked a woman for directions to a police station. Her mom said she told the stranger, "I've been kidnapped and raped and these people are trying to hurt me," according to PIX11 News.
Talking about where her daughter is right now, the girl's mom told the outlet, "She's at the hospital on Staten Island." She added, "She lost a lot of weight. I can tell on her face that she got scars where they dragged her and did stuff to her." The girl's family said she had briefly gone missing a few times in the past, prior to this harrowing incident.
The girl's father said when he used his daughter’s phone and social media contacts to try and trace her movements, he found out that she had met some bad people while playing games on a popular basketball app. Following her disappearance, he drove around all five boroughs of New York City and as far out of the city as Pennsylvania and New Jersey searching for her, but couldn't find her.
New York City Police Department said the teenage girl is set to be interviewed by detectives from its Human Trafficking Unit.
According to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center, New York is the fourth highest state in the US in terms of reported cases of sexual exploitation and labor trafficking. In 2020, human trafficking cases in the state rose around 70% in the first sixth months of the year, compared to the same period in 2019.