Pimp gets prison; woman said he enslaved her
Man pleads guilty to two human trafficking counts
A Milwaukee man who prosecutors say sexually enslaved a woman for six weeks in a locked basement was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison.
Benjamin Franklin Hooks, 25, was charged last year with 15 felonies against several victims, ranging from sexual assault and false imprisonment to human trafficking and armed robbery, all at an elderly neighbor’s home where he moved in, took over and ran his criminal enterprise.
In March, he pleaded guilty to three of them: two human trafficking counts and one of possessing a gun as a felon. The other counts were dismissed.
When she finally escaped on Feb. 14, 2017, a 19-year-old woman identified only as BB told police Hooks beat her, raped her and kept her locked in a room in the basement of the house, where she had to urinate in bottles and sometimes share her food with a dog, wear the dog’s collar or stay in the dog’s cage.
She also said Hooks tied her and blindfolded her in the basement and had other men sexually assault her and that he sexually assaulted another young woman in her presence.
In a statement read in court by Assistant District Attorney Abbey Desiato, BB, now 20, said she’s depressed, angry, scared that she’ll be killed or kidnapped and doesn’t want to be around anyone anymore.
Other people at the house “lied to police and said nobody was down in that basement. I’m not nobody. I was down there,” she wrote. “They heard me banging on those pipes. No one came to help.”
Desiato said over the several months, Hooks and another man ran a prostitution operation from the house in the 6600 block of N. 40th St. — and making a claimed $20,000 a month. Neighbors made 66 complaints to police about activities there.
There were other victims. A 15-yearold girl who told police Hooks beat and pimped her in 2016 committed suicide in December 2017, according to her mother’s victim impact statement.
Hooks’ attorney, Michael F. Hart, said his client regrets the crimes he admitted to, but called some of the claims in the original complaint “embellished or made up entirely.”
Hart said BB had access to a cellphone and records show she was using it during the time she said she was locked in the basement room, including a period when Hooks was in jail on a different charge.
Hooks’ mother and sister spoke for him, saying he’s “not the monster they make him out to be.” Hart said Hooks now understands how his actions affected the women and suggested eight to 10 years in prison as an appropriate sentence.
Circuit Judge Jeffrey Wagner imposed consecutive 71⁄2 year sentences on each human trafficking count, and three years on the gun conviction, to be served concurrently, all followed by 10 years of extended supervision.