'HER SOUL WAS CAPTURED': Pimp gets five years for trafficking 16-year-old girl
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A 16-year-old human trafficking victim says her ordeal left her so depressed it felt as if “her soul was captured,” a court has heard.
Henry Borrego was sentenced to a mandatory minimum of five years in prison Wednesday for coercing the school girl into the sex trade for an 18-day period.
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The victim says the degrading experience squandered her “innocence.”
Borrego, 25, pleaded guilty last fall to one count of human trafficking of a minor in March 2016. Given credit for time he has already served behind bars since his arrest, Borrego has 20 1/2 months left to go of his sentence.
Justice John McMahon said the victim — whose identity is covered by a publication ban — was a “high school student whom Borrego coerced into the sexual trade.
“It’s extremely aggravating the degree of planning used to get the victim by having her girlfriend set up a phone call,” said McMahon. Borrego picked her up in his vehicle under the ruse of giving her a lift to her friend’s home, but he seized control of her, court heard.
Borrego took the victim’s cellphone, created and posted ads, set the rates and restrictions and ordered the teen to accept clients that wanted anal sex, said Crown attorney Corie Langdon in reading an agreed statement of facts.
“You’re pretty, you can make a lot of money, as long as you don’t disobey me,” Langdon quoted Borrego as telling the victim. “She told the accused she wasn’t interested.”
The career criminal, who has convictions for assault, drug trafficking and robbery, wouldn’t take no for an answer.
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“I was isolated from my friends and family, which gave me a feeling of depression like my soul was captured,” the teen stated in a victim-impact statement which was submitted to court.
She serviced an elderly man at a retirement home for $120 and slept with 10 clients at a low-end downtown Toronto hotel over one five-day period, earning Borrego $1,000, said Langdon. The victim escaped by e-mailing her boyfriend from the hotel computer.
Borrego, who emigrated with his single mom from Chile as a five-year-old, earned his high school diploma in jail and vowed to become a law-abiding lifestyle.
“Mr. Borrego is very remorseful for his role and has been doing everything in his power to distance himself from the man he used to be,” said his lawyer Gavin Holder.
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