Sex trafficker gets 25 years
Defendant also assaulted teen
A 27-year-old Milwaukee man convicted of repeatedly assaulting and trafficking a teen girl for sex and then trying to intimidate her from behind bars was sentenced Friday to 25 years in prison.
A jury convicted John E. Mannery Jr. of seven felony counts, including trafficking of a child and witness intimidation, after a five-day trial.
“I think if you had a poster child of how somebody gets themselves involved in trafficking, it would be Mr. Mannery here,” said prosecutor Kevin Shomin, who later added: “This is the worst treatment of a human being that I’ve seen outside of killing them.”
Police say Mannery began as a “Romeo” pimp who met a runaway 16year-old girl at a gas station and coerced her to engage in prostitution by acting like her boyfriend and saying she needed to earn money.
Mannery forced the teen to give him all the money and when he felt he couldn’t control her through flirtation and loyalty, he escalated to brutal sexual assaults and beatings, including one that caused her to miscarry, court records show.
Once in jail, Mannery was heard on recorded calls urging someone to get the teen victim to recant to prosecutors.
“Just make sure (expletive) don’t come to court, man, that’s all I can say,” he said on the recording, according to court documents.
Mannery’s attorney said he had held three jobs at once and wanted to be an entrepreneur, like his father.
But Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Conen, who also gave Mannery 10 years of extended supervision, said those usually positive traits were used for ill in this case.
“He wanted to be a businessman and, yes, he understood the need to make money in a legitimate way to cover basic expenses,” Conen said. “But he wanted to build a business, and the business he wanted to build was that of being a pimp.”
The victim in the case told Conen she did not think Mannery deserved a life sentence. The woman asked not to be publicly identified in media reports, and the Journal Sentinel typically does not identify victims of sexual assault.
“I have really forgiven you and I feel like everybody deserves a chance but you can’t just get away with doing things like that,” she said. “You’ve got a daughter who’s going to be 16 one of these days. Would you like someone doing that to her? Beating her?”
Mannery maintained his innocence and said he was “a human being with human emotions.”
“To everybody who doesn’t personally know me, I’m not a murderer despite whatever the black ink on the white paper says,” he said.