4/4/2005
1010 wins
Topics: Illegal immigration, rape, gangs, laws, crimes, border patrol, ICE
The poor, uneducated teenager was easy prey for Josue Flores Carreto when they met in 1998 at a pastry shop where she worked in central Mexico.

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Amid promises of a better life, they wed in 2001. What followed was beatings, threats and sex with strangers far from home.

Her version of the courtship's dark turn, which Carreto disputes, has become crucial to an unusual federal case accusing him and a crew of fellow predators of forcing Mexican women like his bride into prostitution. Authorities say some of the victims were smuggled into New York in a scheme that made the international ring hundreds of thousands of dollars while leaving them penniless.

Carreto, 37, his brother Gerardo Flores Carreto, 33, and Daniel Perez Alonso, 25, all Mexican nationals, were arrested last year after immigration agents targeted the prostitution ring's U.S. outpost _ two dingy apartments in Queens. The men, who pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking charges, are to go on trial on Monday in federal court in Brooklyn.

Prosecutors plan to put some of the alleged victims on the witness stand to dramatize allegations in court documents that the defendants ``kidnapped, raped and beat women to gain control of them.'' Authorities have decided to withhold their names until they testify.

Mexican federal agents also have arrested several people _ including the Carreto brothers' mother, an alleged ring organizer _ on charges they forced an untold number of women from Mexico City, Acapulco and Guadalajara and other cities to become prostitutes.

U.S. authorities say it's the first international case to reach trial under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, which was intended to abolish involuntary servitude. If convicted, the men face could face life sentences.

The defense will try to convince the jury that the women stole into the United States and sold their bodies by choice. Once picked up on immigration violations, they concocted tales of coercion in a bid to win residency, said Telesforo Del Valle Jr., the attorney for Josue Flores Carreto.

Carreto knew his wife made a living as a prostitute, but ``it was her idea,'' Del Valle said. ``She did it in Mexico and she decided to do it here as well. ... There was no abuse.''

The Carreto case dates to 1991, when the family allegedly began recruiting desperate girls and women, ages 12 to 25, in poor neighborhoods in the states of Tlaxcala and Puebla.

The defendants lured some of the victims into sham marriages more akin to slavery, authorities said. Resistance was met with violence, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel R. Alonso. (No relation to defendant Alonso.)

Some women ``were assaulted with instruments such as cables, beer bottles and belts,'' the prosecutor wrote in court papers. Of the nine victims cited in a federal indictment, three were forced to have abortions, he added.

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