NOV 14, 2021
How ex-cheerleader Corinna Slusser fell victim to NYC sex ring (nypost.com)
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The mom got to confront her daughter’s sex trafficker in an emotional courtroom showdown at one point but was still left without answers.
“Is she dead or alive? Who is the last person he handed her off to?” a weeping Tuorto said in a heart-wrenching victim-impact statement at trafficker Ishi Woney’s 2019 sentencing.
Corinna Slusser vanished without a trace from a Queens motel where rooms are rented by the hour — and Slusser’s stricken mom, Sabina Tuorto, says she is still no closer to tracking down her child.
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Woney is now behind bars, as is one of Slusser’s alleged other pimps, who was sentenced last month to two years in prison for promoting prostitution and drugs.
But neither man has been charged in connection with Slusser’s disappearance, and Tuorto is terrified her daughter’s case is
a mystery that will never be solved.
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“She was getting into trouble. She got fines, underage drinking. Honestly, I noticed that everything was changing with her,’’ Tuorto said. “She was kind of out of control. I didn’t know how to handle her by myself.”
Then “she packed all her clothes, and that was it. I never saw her again.”
The former high-school cheerleader had a fraught relationship with her mother, and when her plans to move in with her aunt during the winter of her senior year fell apart.
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In April 2017, while still in Bloomsburg, Slusser attempted to kill herself by swallowing 50 extra-strength Tylenol tablets, loved ones said. By summer, she was drinking and using drugs frequently, had been fired from her job and was getting cash from sugar daddies she met on the Web site Seeking Arrangements, according to her friends and police.
Slusser was ripe for exploitation, experts said.
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It’s unclear who Slusser followed to New York, but she quickly linked up with Manhattan pimp Yhovanny Peguero, then 32, who allegedly started selling her to sex buyers.
Then in Aug. 25, 2017, the pimp and Slusser had a falling out when Peguero allegedly stole $300 from her purse and slammed her against a wall and choked her when she confronted him about it, police sources have said.
On September 4, 2017, Corinna Slusser booked a room at a Bronx hotel known for its “substantial sex trafficking activity,” and Ishi Woney met her there at some point, court records show.
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Slusser was granted a temporary restraining order against Peguero, but he appeared to continue to groom her from afar and coerce her into coming back to “work” for him, according to court records and Facebook messages from the teen’s account that were reviewed by The Post.
“I just need for you to promise me that when u make that bread u are gonna give me every dollar and u are gonna let me give u [what] u need to buy your clothes and u are gonna let me deal with the rest,’’ the pimp wrote Slusser about 10 days after he allegedly roughed her up.
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But by then, Slusser had already fallen in with a new pimp — convicted sex-trafficker Ishi Woney.
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On or about Sept. 20, the last day Slusser was seen, she had a falling out with Woney when one of his other sex-trafficking victims grew jealous of their relationship, according to court records.
The trafficker left Slusser at a different site, the Haven Motel in Queens, in a room paid for by another man, and claimed he didn’t know what happened to her next, according to court documents.
Woney was sentenced to 15 years behind bars on sex-trafficking raps related to Slusser in Manhattan Federal Court two years later, in November 2019. He is currently serving his sentence at a federal prison.
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On the night Slusser was last seen, she was scared and alone and sought out a familiar face for help — Peguero, according to Facebook messages from her account.
Slusser texted him around 7 p.m. and told him that Woney had left her in Queens with “no money and food” and that she needed his help, the messages show.
“I’m just scared to come to you [because] of everything,” Slusser wrote to Peguero, an apparent reference to his alleged assault against her.
Peguero indicated that he would pick up Slusser — but only if she was willing to get back to “work,” the texts show.
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After that night, the teen was never heard from again.
The assault charges that Peguero had faced for allegedly choking Slusser were dismissed when the teen failed to show up for a court hearing, according to Tuorto and police sources.
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“Look at the Internet, I wasn’t the last person who was with her,” Peguero cryptically said during the jailhouse sit-down, refusing to elaborate.
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But the investigation has never been labeled a homicide case and is still considered just a missing-person’s probe.
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Slusser had been keeping in regular contact with her mom while in New York, and the day the teen went missing, she told Tuorto she was ready to come home, her mother said.
When the teen failed to follow up with her mom later that week and her phone went straight to voicemail,
Tuorto reported her daughter missing.
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Cohen said there is a chance the missing woman could still be under a trafficker’s thumb.
“I’ve worked with a number of victims who, while they were trafficked, their trafficker had absolute control over their ability to communicate, and isolation is an extremely effective way to maintain control over someone, ” she said.
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She said she hopes that Slusser didn’t become another statistic in the cruel business.
“I would love nothing more than to be completely wrong about that theory,” Cohen said.
