By Forum Staff
An indictment was unsealed on Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court charging Queens resident Douglas Welch, also known as “Paradise,” with sex trafficking by force, sex trafficking conspiracy, interstate prostitution and promotion of prostitution.
The charges in the indictment relate to Welch allegedly forcing victims to engage in prostitution, in among other places, a stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue in Brooklyn known as the “Penn Track.”
The Penn Track has for years operated as an open-air market where Welch and others have forced trafficking victims to earn money for them by engaging in commercial sex acts with customers in cars or nearby hotels.
Photo Courtesy of U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of NY
If convicted of the charges, Welch (c.) faces a minimum term of 15 years in prison, and up to life imprisonment.
As alleged in court documents, Welch, 40, recruited women to work on his behalf along the Penn Track and used threats and violence to force those victims to engage in commercial sex with customers, and provide him with the profits. Welch routinely threatened his victims with physical violence if they disobeyed his orders, telling one victim, “if you f*** with the pimping, I’m gonna crack your head” and threatening to “slap the s***” out of another victim for not listening to him. He also bragged about knocking unconscious trafficking victims who disrespected him or other traffickers, including describing one instance in which he grabbed a woman by the throat, knocked her onto the sidewalk and then body slammed her for disrespecting another pimp along the Penn Track. Welch struck a victim with a baseball bat for refusing to engage in prostitution after he directed her to do so, telling another sex trafficker that he wanted to leave a “stain on her brain.”
“As alleged, Welch has trafficked multiple women for his own financial benefit while boasting about the cruel and brutal violence he has inflicted on the vulnerable victims,” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said. “Running a brazen, open-air commercial sex market in East New York or anywhere else in our district is unacceptable, dangerous to our communities, and especially harmful to women caught in this terrible cycle of abuse. Today’s indictment will hold the defendant accountable in a federal courtroom for his exploitative crimes.”
If convicted of the charges, Welch faces a minimum term of 15 years in prison, and up to life imprisonment.
