One of four black men wrongly accused of raping and pimping a troubled young Orthodox Jewish woman has sued the city and Brooklyn district attorney’s office for malicious prosecution, defamation and false imprisonment.
The suit, which seeks unspecified money damages, was filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court on behalf of Darrell Dula, who with his three co-defendants had been publicly pilloried by DA Charles Hynes at a press conference announcing the case in June 2011.
Hynes had called all four men “low lives” in front of reporters, claiming they’d forced the young woman into prostituting herself for eight years, starting when she was 13.
“It’s one of the sickest cases I’ve ever seen,” the veteran prosecutor had enthused.
Dula would spend 10 months in jail — with the threat of as much as 25 years prison over his head — before the sensational sex slave charges were dismissed this summer.
“At the press conference they made awful allegations against him,” well beyond the rape charges in the indictment, said Dula lawyer Eric Siegle.
“They told reporters that Mr. Dula had been involved in sex trafficking, and had threatened the woman’s family members,” added co-counsel Jonathan Sims.
Hynes and lead prosecutor Lauren Hersh proceeded with the prosecution despite knowing that a year prior, the woman had brought similar allegations to NYPD sex crimes detectives, only to change her mind and recant within hours.
Months after the charges were dropped, Hersh resigned from the helm of the DA’s new sex trafficking unit, for which the sex slave indictments had been heralded as a first big case.
“Defendants were aware that the alleged rape victim recanted her rape allegations against Dula prior to arresting and charging Dula with Rape in the First Degree,” according to the lawsuit.
“We will review the suit,” said a city Law Department spokeswoman.
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