Runaway Girl, 15, Sold Into Slavery, Officials Allege

A 15-year-old runaway from upstate New York was sold into slavery for $500 and forced to perform sexual acts while imprisoned in a Queens basement to pay off the buyer, court records show.Law enforcement officials said the alleged sale of the teenager, who ran away in January of last year, is the first case in recent memory of a pimp paying cash to take ownership of a prostitute.Police detectives are searching for the man who made the alleged sale, law enforcement officials said.“Obviously, you don’t think in a year like 2005 that people are being sold on the street, and that one human being could own a 15-year-old girl, but it happened,” one supervising prosecutor handling the case, Anthony Communiello, said. Mr. Communiello runs the Special Proceedings Bureau for the Queens district attorney, Richard Brown.The alleged sale took place at the home of Jackson Metellus, 24, who also was convicted for a bank robbery and is serving out a 15-year sentence in prison.In the bedroom of Metellus’s home, in the Rosedale section, the unknown man allegedly offered to sell the girl to Metellus for $500, according to a criminal complaint that outlines the teenager’s allegations. It was filed by Queens prosecutors.Directly after Metellus paid the $500 fee, according to the complaint, he then told the teenager she would have to make up the $500 he paid for her.The girl was then instructed to take off all her clothes. She was locked inside a basement bedroom without any food, water, or a telephone. She was kept in the windowless room for about a month, according to the complaint, and was not allowed to wear any clothes at any time she was inside the apartment.During the course of one day, Metellus, who ultimately pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution in May 2004, allegedly had sex with the teenager as many as 10 times, the complaint alleges.If the teenager did not comply with the sexual favors, she claims she would be denied food and water and be treated harshly. The girl was also forced to have sex with two of Metellus’s relatives during the period of alleged imprisonment, including his father, Jacques Metellus, 51, who subsequently pleaded guilty to statutory rape charges and was sentenced to 30 days in jail and 10 years of probation. Jacque Metellus could not be reached yesterday.The teenager was also forced to engage in oral sex and sexual intercourse on at least 15 different occasions with different men in motel rooms.Yesterday, her alleged purchaser, Jackson Metellus, was sentenced to serve a two- to six-year prison sentence for the prostitution charges, time that will be spent in addition to the 15 years in prison for the armed robbery conviction. The conviction of Metellus and his father were the fourth thus far to have stemmed from the allegations of the 15-year-old, who claims she was traded among at least three different pimps.Her ordeal began after she accepted a ride from strangers after running away from home in January 2004. At one point during the last year, the teenager was arrested for prostitution in Miami. Hours before her mother arrived to the Florida jail to cover her daughter’s $2,400 bail, law enforcement officials said the teenager had left with her pimp, who arrived in court first.The pimp, a 26-year-old female, Christine Waltzer, also of Queens, is now serving a three- to nine-year sentence in state prison on prostitution charges. The 15-year-old is back living with her family, prosecutors said.

Runaway Girl, 15, Sold Into Slavery, Officials Allege

Runaway Girl, 15, Sold Into Slavery, Officials Allege

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