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A Bay Shore man pleaded guilty Wednesday to sex trafficking and rape charges stemming from his sexual exploitation of multiple women and a teenage who was a key witness in his case when she disappeared for 25 days in late 2024.
Danny St. Louis, 45, pleaded guilty before Suffolk Supreme Court Justice Timothy Mazzei to three counts of second-degree rape, two counts of sex trafficking, and one count of attempted sex trafficking, Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney announced. He is expected to be sentenced on June 23 to 15 years in prison followed by 10 years of post-release supervision.
The case centers on St. Louis’ exploitation of several victims, including a 13-year-old girl who he deliberately got addicted to crack cocaine before repeatedly raping and trafficking her throughout 2023, prosecutors said. Greater Long Island confirmed earlier that the victim is the Patchogue girl who later went missing in December 2024 at age 14 while cooperating with prosecutors in the St. Louis case.
The multiagency search for the teen — as well as her father’s almost social media daily updates on the search — drew national attention before she was found nearly four weeks later aboard a yacht docked at an Islip marina. Newsday also has reported the Patchogue girl’s connection to the St. Louis criminal case.
More than a dozen people have since been arrested in connection with the girl’s sexual abuse and exploitation during those 25 days, authorities said.
“Among this defendant’s victims was a 13-year-old child whom he deliberately got addicted to drugs before repeatedly raping and exploiting her,” Tierney said in a statement. “No sentence can undo that harm, but today’s plea ensures he will be held accountable and that he cannot victimize anyone else for years to come.”
Pattern of exploitation
Court documents and St. Louis’ admissions during his guilty plea allocution indicate that he met the then-13-year-old through a mutual acquaintance in early 2023 and provided her with cocaine. St. Louis began communicating with the child regularly and sexually abused her on three separate occasions, prosecutors said.
St. Louis’ abuse of the girl continued until October 2023, when the victim ran away from a residential drug treatment facility, the district attorney said in his statement. Police found her with St. Louis in a hotel room on Oct. 8, 2024.
Between March 2023 and March 2024, St. Louis also acted with the intent to profit from the prostitution of two additional adult victims, unlawfully providing them with drugs as a method of maintaining control over them, prosecutors said.
Additional victim
On March 3, 2024, St. Louis arranged to have a fourth victim, a 20-year-old woman, meet him at a hotel in Hauppauge, where he was staying. St. Louis supplied cocaine to that woman and stayed with the victim in the hotel room for two days, prompting her family to file a missing person report with authorities, Tierney said.
At one point, St. Louis accused the victim of stealing crack cocaine from him and forced her to undress, shower, and then have sex with him to repay her supposed debt. The sexual conduct was filmed, and St. Louis discussed a plan to use the video as an advertisement to sell the victim to sex buyers, prosecutors said.
On March 5, 2024, the victim had an opportunity to get away from St. Louis and fled the hotel to call her family. St. Louis was ultimately arrested nine days later, after he agreed to provide a buyer with sex and drugs in exchange for money.
Top: SCDA office
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