Thursday, 4:30 PM
Mattapan pimp sent to prison
By Caitlin Castello, Globe Correspondent
With the aid of a former prostitute, a Mattapan pimp was sentenced on Friday to the maximum prison term possible, the Suffolk district attorney's office said this morning.
Following a three-day trial, Devin Benders, 24, was convicted of inducing a minor into prostitution and deriving support from prostitution, and was sentenced to four to five years in state prison on each count.
Prosecutors said that Benders lured a 16-year-old girl, who suffers from a neurological disability, into prostitution after meeting her online, and called her "Cupcake."
She was arrested by an undercover Chelsea police officer. Her charges were dismissed after she identified Benders and after she was enrolled in a program in which law enforcement and social service agencies work together to get girls out of prostitution. The girl, now 17, graduated from East Boston High School, the district attorney's office said.
"This case provides an example of what law enforcement and social service agencies can accomplish when we work together," Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, who led the creation of the Teen Prostitution Prevention Program in 2004, said in a statement. "We can protect society’s most vulnerable members and take down those who exploit them."
