Shared by Lisa Thompson, Salvation Army.
September 21, 2011
NEW YORK (Reuters) - She will not forget the "pimp stick" beatings and forced sex, but a 22-year-old New Yorker was allowed on Wednesday to erase her criminal prostitution record, the first U.S. citizen to do so under a new sex trafficking law.
Identified by authorities only as Ms. Johnson, a pseudonym used out of concern for her safety, the woman was a 13-year-old runaway when she was pushed into prostitution by a 21-year-old man she thought was her boyfriend, according to documents filed in state Supreme Court in the Bronx.
Over the next six years, the Bronx native was sold by pimps on the street and convicted three times for prostitution before a customer helped her to escape.
On Wednesday, her criminal record for prostitution was expunged by a judge who agreed with both prosecutors and defense attorneys that she was protected under a recent New York State law that equates pimps with sex traffickers.
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