A 40-year-old man was sentenced to more than 17 years in federal prison Wednesday for selling a then-12-year-old girl for sex night after night while her mother worked at a strip club.
Marcelo Desautu charged each customer up to $600, giving some to the child after he plied her with drugs and alcohol. He kept most of it to fund his own meth addiction.
"I have great, great remorse," Desautu told U.S. District Judge Orinda Evans at his sentencing. "I know I should have done something to help the victim. Instead I made it worse."
The mother had been dropping off her daughter with Desautu, who she thought was a friend, so he could watch her while the mother worked. Instead he would give her drugs and alcohol, have sex with her and then take her to have sex with other men, according to prosecutors. The abuse lasted for about three months beginning in December 2007.
Desautu "earned his substantial sentence in federal prison when he drugged and sexually exploited a 12-year-old girl, forever altering the course of her life," said U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates. " It is unfathomable that there is even a market for the sale of such a young child for sex."
The girl, who is not named because she was the victim of a sex crime, almost died, overdosing on methamphetamine and slipping into a coma for three days in 2008.
That is when local prosecutors in Cobb and Gwinnett Counties learned of the operation. Among the men who used the girl's services was the one-time CEO of Reflex Security, Peter Privateer, who pleaded guilty in Cobb County in December to child molestation and sentenced to 10 years in prison; he will appear in Gwinnett County Court April 17 to face a statutory rape charge.
Experts say human trafficking comes in several forms -- boys, girls and young women who are held captive and forced into prostitution and people who come to the United States for work and are held in slave-like conditions. The Governor's Officer for Children and Families estimates that 400 girls are sexually exploited a month in Georgia.
Federal authorities have been aggressively hunting and prosecuting those who trade in human beings. Cobb County handed over its case against Desautu because the punishment in the federal system is tougher and there is no parole, officials said.
The judge said the 17 year sentence recognizes that Desautu has already spent 2 1/2 years in the Cobb County jail awaiting trial. Once he is freed, Desautu will have to spend a decade on supervised release.
The girl's mother sat on one side of the courtroom, crying, Wednesday as Desautu was sentenced. Desautu's parents were on the other side and his mother also cried quietly.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jill Steinberg said the girl has moved on and has "a new life. But she is forever scarred.."
"This is a very serious offense, and the age [difference] between you and the victim was tremendous," the judge said. "I do believe you are profoundly sorry for what you did. I do believe the sentence I gave is significant enough to reflect the seriousness of the crime."
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