Newsday review finds relatively lighter sex trafficking sentences are common for Long Island prosecutions

A Queens man admitted trafficking a woman out of a Uniondale hotel, prosecutors said, threatening to expose her to her family if she refused to comply.

He was sentenced to as little as 1 year in prison.

Across Long Island, prosecutors and advocates say sex trafficking leaves victims psychologically shattered for years, sometimes for life. But some defendants charged under New York’s trafficking laws are pleading guilty and receiving sentences far from the maximum allowed under the law.

Advocates say traffickers often prey on girls and women from unstable homes, using affection, dependency, drugs and threats to gain control long before victims recognize they are being exploited.

Prosecutors on Long Island have sought to punish nearly two dozen defendants accused of sex trafficking girls and young women since 2022. But few resulted in maximum prison sentences. Newsday found relatively lighter sentences are common.

Newsday looked at 22 cases of sex trafficking on Long Island, both state and federal cases, and found that many defendants who have been charged with sex trafficking — classified in the state law as a B-level felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison — didn't receive the longest prison sentences allowed under the law.

In one case, Frank Saggio — a mob associate and leader of a long-running prostitution ring that operated brothels in Holbrook and West Babylon with now-fired Suffolk County Police Officer George Trimigliozzi — pleaded guilty to enterprise corruption after he was indicted for sex trafficking. Although he hasn't yet been sentenced, Saggio is expected to receive just 2 to 6 years in prison.

In just five of the 22 cases, the defendants were convicted at trial — an arduous task for prosecutors to convince victims to testify against their abusers — but a process that typically results in lengthier prison sentences.

Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney argued that trafficking prosecutions often depend on deeply traumatized victims who may fear retaliation, struggle with addiction or refuse to testify publicly against their abusers. Tierney estimated there have been dozens of cases involving allegations of sex trafficking that he hasn't been able to prosecute, for myriad reasons, including that the victim wouldn't cooperate, during his time as district attorney.

"What can I prove, and at what cost?" Tierney said prosecutors must ask themselves.

In one instance, a 55-year-old man from Queens, Jorge Ramos, pleaded guilty last year to sex trafficking a woman at a Uniondale hotel. Prosecutors said he got the victim to comply by threatening to expose her to her family.

Ramos was sentenced to just 1 to 3 years in prison, although Nassau prosecutors had asked for a stiffer punishment.

"I cannot say that I was satisfied," Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said of Ramos' sentencing. "My office recommended 3 to 9 and we always hope the judge agrees with our recommendations because our recommendations are based on the whole investigation of the case, the whole picture of what he had done. He trafficked multiple women in Queens County and in hotels here in Nassau. He threatened to expose one of his victims to her family and use that threat so she would continue to engage in sex and make him money."

Ramos' attorney did not respond to messages seeking comment. 

Many more sex trafficking cases are still pending, including several of the defendants charged in Suffolk in connection with the 14-year-old Patchogue girl who disappeared for 25 days. Newsday chronicled the girl's story, which includes allegations she was kidnapped, raped and sex trafficked before she was found aboard an old yacht in January of last year.

Just this week, Jacquelyn Comiskey, one of the several defendants accused of sex trafficking the girl, pleaded guilty to sex trafficking and other charges in a plea deal that's expected to result in a sentence of 12 years in prison and 20 years of probation. She faced up to 25 years in prison if convicted at trial. Suffolk prosecutors had asked for a plea-bargained sentence of 15 years in prison.

Push for harsher sentences

Donnelly said she's advocated for the State Legislature to create a mandatory minimum of 5 years in prison for sex trafficking — as the legislature did for child sex trafficking in 2018 — to no avail.

"I spend time up in Albany and always want to bang my head against the wall after," Donnelly said. "We bring it up, we make our pitch, we explain why. And sometimes we get a little traction, and then it loses traction. But I'm not gonna stop, that's for sure."

State Sen. Monica Martinez (D-Brentwood) said she is pushing to increase the penalties for those convicted of sex trafficking on the state level — a remedy that some in the advocacy community say is needed.

Martinez's legislation would make both sex trafficking and sex trafficking of a child A-II felonies under state law, increasing the potential punishment for those convicted of the crimes.

"And we also know that these crime victims will have this longtime harm to them, whether they get therapy or assistance or resources, that pain will never go away," Martinez said. "I think having stricter sentences serves as a powerful deterrent to these organized trafficking rings and it sends honestly a clear message that New York will stand with our victims and it will not tolerate the trafficking of people."

Advocates say traffickers often prey on girls and women from unstable homes, using affection, dependency, drugs and threats to gain control long before victims recognize they are being exploited.

Feride Castillo, a co-founder of ECLI-VIBES, an Islandia-based group that provides support services to trafficking survivors, said "more aggressive punishment is definitely needed."

"The state is definitely lacking a little bit of bite when it comes to the laws and how far they can sentence someone who's done such horrific, such a horrific crime," she said.

Castillo, who has worked with women who have been sex trafficked, said more resources are needed to tackle the issue in Suffolk — a societal ill she says was seemingly ignored in years past.

"We have a unit of about, I think it's about six detectives for all the entire county looking and investigating human trafficking cases," she said. "We need more resources."

Targeting the vulnerable

New York's anti-trafficking law took effect in 2007, criminalizing sex trafficking as defined as compelling a person by force, false promises or coercive threats to engage in prostitution. A child sex trafficking statute was added in 2018.

A 2024 state report on sex trafficking said a program that identifies trafficking victims and connects them with services received 515 referrals from law enforcement or social services that year. Of those confirmed cases, 114 were on Long Island or in the lower Hudson Valley, the report said.

Many victims of human trafficking grew up in unstable homes that included violence. And many were sexually abused as children. Traffickers sometimes push drugs on the victims in order to fuel their addiction, incentivizing sex work so that they can afford to pay for the drugs, according to experts.

"They groom you and they paint this picture of like a happy life together and for individuals who have never had a normal upbringing, who have craved in their entire life for love, attention, affection, care, someone you know, someone to build a life with, you know, a stable home," Castillo said. "I mean, we are all willing to, kind of go to lengths to obtain that when we've never had it."

Tierney, whose office started the HEAT unit, which prosecutes human trafficking and other crimes that target vulnerable groups in 2022, said he's satisfied with the sentences given to defendants that his office has prosecuted.

"We wanted to take a more comprehensive look at sex trafficking and the problem with sex trafficking is you have vulnerable victims and victims that, number one, asking them to testify is, you're re-traumatizing them, re-victimizing them," Tierney said.

Like any criminal case, prosecutors consider a number of factors, including the strength of the evidence and the willingness of a victim to testify, when determining how to prosecute a case.

Tierney said any case that relies exclusively on the word of a victim without corroboration, which can be the case in sex trafficking prosecutions, is difficult.

Also, victims who have mental health or substance abuse issues or may have been involved in the criminal justice system in the past can present challenges for prosecutors, Tierney said.

"Those cases tend to fall apart," he said.

Tierney said what most weighs on prosecutors is trying to avoid retraumatizing victims by compelling them to testify publicly, usually within feet of their abusers.

Going after sex traffickers

The district attorney said in 2021, the year before he took office as district attorney, there were no sex trafficking prosecutions in Suffolk. He cited three cases prosecuted by the HEAT unit that resulted in lengthy sentences in 2023.

He said one offender was sentenced to 12 years and 20 years post-release supervision for sex trafficking. Another defendant convicted of sex trafficking received 10 years in prison and 5 years probation. A third defendant, who was convicted of aggravated patronizing a minor for prosecution in the second-degree, was sentenced to 8 years in prison plus 10 years' probation.

Last year, Suffolk prosecutors scored a long sentence for another sex trafficker. Michael Howell, 65, from Brooklyn, was sentenced to 13 to 29 years in prison after a jury convicted him of running a sex trafficking ring out of hotels on Long Island.

But Trimigliozzi, the former Suffolk officer who pleaded guilty to managing brothels in Holbrook and West Babylon — he wasn't accused of sex trafficking — was sentenced to just 2 years.

Danny St. Louis, a 45-year-old Bay Shore man, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in June for sex trafficking two women and raping the Patchogue girl that he deliberately got addicted to crack cocaine in the months before her 25-day disappearance. He pleaded guilty to multiple counts of rape and sex trafficking as part of a plea agreement — avoiding a trial and a potential sentence of decades in prison.

After St. Louis serves his prison time, he will be on probation for a decade.

"These sentences need to be more in line with the actual violence and trauma that happens to these victims," Donnelly said. "You're talking right now about dragging a woman — it's mostly women, I'm not saying men are never trafficked — who's been severely traumatized through a prosecution, testimony, a trial, cross-examination, all in front of her abuser. At the end, she can see her trafficker go to prison for just a year. There's no justice in that."