Florida: 11 Years For Human Trafficking/Gay Sex Ringleader

(photo credit  - Carl Juste)

The Miami Herald is reporting on what may be the first prison sentence for someone convicted of the human trafficking of gay men.

His captors raped him. One of the ringleaders, who sometimes wielded a sword, threatened him and his family in Hungary with bloodshed. If he slept with enough johns, the traffickers might give him extra food or a few cigarettes.

Even today, the ordeal has left his psyche in tatters, the 24-year-old told a judge on Tuesday.

“It’s really hard for me to socialize, to mingle with people,” he testified through a Hungarian interpreter. “I started drinking heavily to try and forget. I lost all my friends.”

His story — and the accounts of two other Hungarian men forced into sex slavery — convinced a Miami-Dade judge to sentence one of the ringleaders, Andras Janos Vass, to just over 11 years in state prison for human trafficking.

The 24 year old Hungarian man traveled to NYC in 2012 with two other young men after being promised they would be working for a legitimate business, and earn thousands of dollars.

All three men were forced to live in a cramped one bedroom apartment in NYC, performing sex acts at all times of day.