Ringleader Gary Council tries to hide his face from courtroom reporters.
A 22-year-old man was sentenced to two to six years in prison last week after his guilty plea to sex trafficking charges after he forced a 15-year-old runaway from Long Island to work as a prostitute and to turn over all of her earnings to him.
Gary Council, 22-years-old of 91st Street in Ozone Park was the ringleader of a 6 person gang that took the victim and a friend to a house on 101st Avenue, where they were squatting, and there she was introduced to Council.
Council and his cohorts were indicted for gang raping, kidnapping and prostituting the teen from Suffolk county.
When the unnamed victim attempted to then leave the house, Council told her, “You’re not going anywhere. You are going to stay here and make my money.”
Between February 6, 2012, and February 11, 2012, the victim was forced to have sexual
Intercourse and oral sex with numerous men inside of the location in exchange for money and all of the money was given to Council. When the victim tried to take a shower, Council grabbed her hair and told her to get back downstairs and again told her she was to go make his money.
The ring's madame, 21-year-old Andrea Furlonge.
On another occasion the victim attempted to leave the location but was grabbed and pulled back inside by Council who told her that if she tried to leave she would have big problems.
One of Council’s accomplices, Andrea Furlonge, who acted as the “madame” of the ring, took nude and partially clothed pictures of the runaway and herself and posted them on a sex-peddling online site known as Backpage.com.
In the days that followed the runaway was forced to have sex with numerous men, with the money being collected by Furlonge and turned over to Council.
The absentee owner of the house discovered that Furlonge and two men had been living on the first floor back in late January before the kidnapping had even occurred. He ordered the squatters out and changed the locks on the building but they cut the locks and replace them with new ones.
The victim said that on February 8 she was forced to take two ecstasy pills before being tied up and raped and sodomized by four men, including Council, while two others watched. On February 12 the girl was told to go across the street to buy snacks—instead she ran away and did not come back.
By Patricia Adams
