Cheerleader Falls Man Carrying Her Drops Her Again
When an older man promised 18-year-former Corinna Slusser a new life in the Big Apple, the former cheerleader left her small town on the banks of the Susquehanna River and told her mom back home non to worry.
Merely after the teen's arrival in New York City, she was swiftly ensnared in a Bronx sex-trafficking ring.
Her images were splashed across the spider web in advertisements for paid sex, and her body was sold in seedy hotel rooms by a notorious pimp accused of beating up his workers and stealing their money.
Still, the horrors that Slusser suffered at the hands of the pimp and a convicted sex-trafficker would pale in comparison to what her mother and victim advocates fear happened side by side.
Less than two months later on the teen arrived in Gotham in 2017, she vanished without a trace from a Queens cabin where rooms are rented by the 60 minutes — and Slusser'south stricken mom, Sabina Tuorto, says she is still no closer to tracking down her child.
"My biggest fright is that I'll never get closure, that I'll never know what happened to her," Tuorto told The Mail service in a tearful contempo interview.
The mom got to confront her daughter'southward sexual practice trafficker in an emotional court showdown at i indicate but was still left without answers.
"Is she dead or alive? Who is the concluding person he handed her off to?" a weeping Tuorto said in a center-wrenching victim impact statement at trafficker Ishi Woney'due south 2019 sentencing.
"Delight, Ishi, disclose where my child is."
The and then-24-twelvemonth-onetime convict unexpectedly blurted out, "Honestly, I don't know.''
Woney is now behind bars, as is ane of Slusser'due south declared other pimps, who was sentenced last month to two years in prison house for promoting prostitution and drugs.
But neither man has been charged in connexion with Slusser'south disappearance, and Tuorto is terrified her girl'southward case is a mystery that will never be solved.
"It'south been four years,'' the mother noted.
"Just I still shouldn't give up,'' she said. "Everybody tells me in that location's a possibility she's out there. That'due south what I alive off. I just pray to God, and I just go on trying to have faith."
In the months preceding Slusser'southward move to New York, her life in rural Bloomsburg, Pa., had taken a night turn, according to friends and her original missing person report.
The former high school cheerleader had a fraught relationship with her mother, and when her plans to move in with her aunt during the winter of her senior year savage apart, she began living with a friend and soon dropped out of school.
"She was getting into trouble. She got fines, underage drinking. Honestly, I noticed that everything was changing with her,'' Tuorto said. "She was kind of out of control. I didn't know how to handle her past myself."
Then "she packed all her dress, and that was it. I never saw her again."
Even as Slusser posted sparkling photos of herself on her social media accounts, behind her perfectly made-upwards face up was a fractured interior wracked by the hurting of coming of age in a town that felt too small-scale, said those who know her.
In April 2017, while notwithstanding in Bloomsburg, Slusser attempted to impale herself by swallowing 50 actress-strength Tylenol tablets, loved ones said. By summer, she was drinking and using drugs frequently, had been fired from her task and was getting cash from sugar daddies she met on the website Seeking Arrangement, co-ordinate to her friends and police.
Slusser was ripe for exploitation, experts said.
So when an older man living the fast life in New York Metropolis offered her a place to stay in the Big Apple that Baronial, she accustomed, telling her mom she'd be fine.
"It is very common that teenagers will get ensnared with someone who promised them the sun and the moon and the stars, and the teenager might be looking for love … and also may feel that the parents and other responsible adults in the teen's life just don't understand her," said Lori Cohen, CEO of the anti-kid-sex-trafficking group ECPAT-USA.
"Traffickers are very skilled at sniffing that out,'' said Cohen, who has spent decades working with survivors of the sex trade.
It's unclear whom Slusser followed to New York, simply she chop-chop linked upward with Manhattan pimp Yhovanny Peguero, then 32, who allegedly started selling her to sex buyers.
So on Aug. 25, 2017, the pimp and Slusser had a falling out when Peguero allegedly stole $300 from her purse and slammed her against a wall and choked her when she confronted him virtually it, police sources have said.
Peguero had gotten out of prison house four months earlier for attempted drug dealing and already washed two previous stints upstate for attempted burglary and promoting prostitution, records evidence.
Slusser was granted a temporary restraining lodge against Peguero, but he appeared to continue to groom her from afar and coerce her into coming dorsum to "work" for him, according to court records and Facebook messages from the teen'due south business relationship that were reviewed by The Postal service.
"I just need for you to promise me that when u make that bread u are gonna requite me every dollar and u are gonna allow me requite u [what] u need to buy your clothes and u are gonna let me deal with the rest,'' the pimp wrote Slusser nearly x days after he allegedly roughed her up.
"Once nosotros come to that agreement scout how imma care for u," Peguero said.
"I know everything about u that the next guy probably didn't even bother asking. Like your favorite color, nutrient, or even your altogether. It f–ks with you. We just went through a very bad experience. Honestly sweetheart if u would've only stuck to the plan that I had for usa nosotros would've never had that."
But past then, Slusser had already fallen in with a new pimp — convicted sex activity-trafficker Ishi Woney.
On Sept. 4, 2017, Slusser booked a room at a Bronx hotel known for its "substantial sex trafficking activity," and Woney met her there at some bespeak, court records show.
Between Sept. 10 and 20, the trafficker also exchanged more than 800 text messages with the teen and posted prostitution ads with her photos, the documents say.
On or nigh Sept. 20, the concluding day Slusser was seen, she had a falling out with Woney when i of his other sex-trafficking victims grew jealous of their relationship, co-ordinate to courtroom records.
The trafficker left Slusser at a different site, the Oasis Motel in Queens, in a room paid for past another man, and claimed he didn't know what happened to her next, according to courtroom documents.
Woney was sentenced to 15 years behind bars on sexual practice-trafficking raps related to Slusser in Manhattan federal courtroom two years after, in November 2019. He is currently serving his sentence at a federal prison.
Slusser's mom attended Woney's sentencing, where she delivered her emotional victim touch on statement demanding answers from the captive.
Woney responded, "I never passed her off to anybody.
"Is she dead or alive? I'm honestly not sure, simply I pray she'due south live," he said.
On the nighttime Slusser was last seen, she was scared and alone and sought out a familiar face for help — Peguero, co-ordinate to Facebook messages from her account.
Slusser texted him around 7 p.g. and told him that Woney had left her in Queens with "no coin and food" and that she needed his help, the messages evidence.
"I'm only scared to come to you lot [because] of everything," Slusser wrote to Peguero, an apparent reference to his alleged set on against her.
Peguero indicated that he would pick upwardly Slusser — but only if she was willing to become back to "work," the texts show.
Slusser fired back, "If you missed me you wouldn't say [kickoff] thing 'is she gonna work for me'… You'd worry about my well being and go me without stipulation. Y'all intendance about money not me."
Merely after a few hours passed, Slusser appeared more desperate for Peguero's assistance, and the ii fabricated plans to meet up, the texts show — although information technology's non clear if they ever got together.
Afterwards that night, the teen was never heard from again.
The assault charges that Peguero had faced for allegedly choking Slusser were dismissed when the teen failed to show up for a court hearing, according to Tuorto and law sources.
Peguero was after arrested for promoting prostitution in 2018 and cocaine possession in June 2021, and on Oct. 25, sentenced to 2 years behind bars for the offenses.
The Mail went to Rikers Isle later on Peguero'south sentencing to interview him nigh what happened to Slusser. He was adamant that he was not the last person with her.
"Look at the internet, I wasn't the last person who was with her," Peguero cryptically said during the jailhouse sit down-downwards, refusing to elaborate.
"I don't know anything nearly that," he added of her disappearance.
A law source told The Mail that Peguero was questioned over Slusser'southward disappearance and "looked at hard'' in terms of possibly knowing something nigh it.
But the investigation has never been labeled a homicide case and is nevertheless considered only a missing-person probe.
"At some signal, she's looking for a ride. [Peguero] says he wanted her to behave. She didn't seem willing to comply, then at some indicate, she falls off the radar," the source said.
Slusser had been keeping in regular contact with her mom while in New York, and the twenty-four hour period the teen went missing, she told Tuorto she was ready to come domicile, her mother said.
When the teen failed to follow up with her mom afterwards that week and her telephone went straight to voicemail, Tuorto reported her daughter missing.
In the years since Slusser's disappearance, a Facebook page was set up in her proper name, and while the odd tips here and there take been sent to Tuorto and then cops, no real leads have materialized.
"I experience hopeless," Tuorto, who has since relocated to Jacksonville, North Carolina, told The Mail.
"I waited as long every bit I could for Corinna, and she wasn't returning, and information technology'due south depressing. … Sometimes I don't even want to, you lot know, I don't want to be hither."
Cohen said there is a chance the missing woman could still exist under a trafficker's thumb.
"I've worked with a number of victims who, while they were trafficked, their trafficker had accented control over their ability to communicate, and isolation is an extremely effective way to maintain control over someone, " she said.
"There could be a threat like, 'You lot try to contact your mother, and I'll kill her.' "
The skilful as well noted the inherent danger of the commercial sex merchandise and the high rates of violence that victims face not just from their pimps simply the buyers who purchase sexual practice from them, likewise.
"Prostitution is lethal,'' Cohen said. "Information technology'due south more dangerous than being a coal miner, it's more dangerous than being a firefighter.
"I think if y'all were to look at statistics of lethality, you'd have to expect at beingness engaged in armed combat to compare to the risks of being in the commercial sex merchandise."
She said she hopes that Slusser didn't go some other statistic in the fell business.
"I would love nothing more to be completely wrong about that theory," Cohen said.
Boosted reporting past Jack Morphet
Source: https://nypost.com/2021/11/14/how-ex-cheerleader-corinna-slusser-fell-victim-to-nyc-sex-ring/
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