Feds bust New York sex trafficking ring, arrest 19: Hubert Dupigny, Hensley Dupigny named in case
Federal prosecutors in New York have charged nineteen people tied to a sex trafficking ring that exploited teenage victims at the Hawthorne Cedar Knolls Residential Treatment Center, a center for children with emotional and behavioral problems in Mount Pleasant.
photo/ Sammis Reachers
The United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, the F.B.I. and the police department announced charges on Thursday against defendants who preyed on at least 15 teens in the child welfare system. Nine were residents at the Hawthorne facility.
One man, Hubert Dupigny, 34, recruited a 16-year-old girl from Hawthorne who worked for him as a prostitute until he was arrested in December 2016. The girl then worked for his brother, Hensley Dupigny, 29, who posted advertisements for her on Backpage.com and collected most of her earnings.
A prosecutor said at a court hearing in August for Hensley Dupigny that the alleged conspiracy was “particularly egregious” because the defendants sought out minors in the social services system, often children with behavioral or emotional problems who had become wards of the state.
The defendants, who pleaded not guilty, “approached victims as if they had a romantic interest in them,” said prosecutor Elinor Tarlow. “They offered them a place to stay and then they pushed them into prostitution.”
“Children in the child welfare system are among the most vulnerable in our society,” U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in a statement. “The defendants and their conspirators callously recruited girls as young as 13 from a residential treatment facility for at-risk youth then sexually trafficked and prostituted them for financial profit.”
In recent months, the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Service, which manages Hawthorne, announced the shuttering of the facility after receiving sanctions from New York’s child welfare office.
In December 2017, the New York Times reported that a teen goes missing from Hawthorne “nearly every day.”
