Sex slave horror in Brooklyn

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By MURRAY WEISS and KATI CORNELL

Last Updated: 6:20 PM, November 25, 2009

Posted: 5:51 PM, November 25, 2009

A sex slave trafficker lured a love-smitten 15-year-old girl to from Mexico to Brooklyn, turned her into a prostitute and then let their infant child die without medical care, authorities said today.

The ghoulish story emerged as federal agents raided an apartment on 40th Street in Sunset Park and removed a cement-packed bucket that is believed to hold the tiny remains of the child

Agents arrested Domingo Salazar, 33, who was described as an illegal alien who had been deported to Mexico after being arrested in a similar sex trafficking case

Sources said he returned to the US and ran a new trafficking ring that brought in several unwitting women from Mexico to become prostitutes

While in Mexico he began a romantic relationship with the teen and later paid a smuggler to bring her to the US in April 2007

After she arrived she gave birth to their baby.

But Salazar forced her into turning $17.50 tricks, at a rate of 8 to 15 tricks per shift.

He and his wife Norma Mendez, 32, began abusing her — including beating her with a brick

Sources said the woman, now in protective custody, had knife wounds, black eyes, broken fingers and broken bones in her hand when rescued.

In January 2008 her baby became ill but Salazar wouldn’t let her take the child to a hospital.

After the tiny girl died, Salazar had the grief-stricken mother put the child in a bucket which they filled with cement and then hid in a storage bin.

The bucket was removed from the apartment yesterday and x-rays determined there was a tiny child inside, sources said.

Investigators were stunned by the cruelty of the case.

"It is unconscionable in this day and age that there are person who would hold other human beings in conditions of servitude and force them into lives of prostitution in order to line their own pockets," said US Attorney Ben Campbell


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