S&M fetishist John Hopkins has finally been freed from his bonds.
The 45-year-old was released without bail on June 29 after it was revealed that his would-be victim wasn’t coming back to Brooklyn to testify against him.
DA Charles Hynes agreed that Hopkins be released on his own recognizance during last week’s bail hearing. He had been imprisoned since February, when cops found a woman he met from a Craig’s List ad lying half-naked on his Humboldt Street apartment floor, chained to a radiator.
Hopkins contends that this bizarre master-slave relationship was consensual, but cops tell a different story: he posted an ad on Craigslist claiming that a young woman could live at his Williamsburg pad as long as she cooked for him, but when his victim from Wisconsin flew in, he allegedly imprisoned her — telling her that she had to be his sex slave.
Hopkins allegedly bound and gagged the woman for over a week and forced her to have oral and anal sex, sometimes handcuffing her to the radiator, according to law enforcement sources.
But Hopkins let her leave the apartment so she could go to a restaurant job she held in Manhattan, cops said.
Within two weeks, the woman called her mother back in Wisconsin, begging her for help. Her mom called police, who raided Hopkins’s home and found the victim chained to the radiator, suffering from alcohol poisoning.
Hopkins, who couldn’t make the high bail set during his arraignment, was put in jail and the victim returned to her mother in the Badger State, but the prosecution’s case began to fall apart when the victim refused to come back to Brooklyn and testify.
Hopkins’s attorney, however, claimed that the victim was in on the game the whole time — and has the e-mails to prove it.
“I wish nothing more than to serve your every demand (and maybe forcedly…),” read an e-mail attorney Andrew Stoll claimed was sent from the victim on Dec. 27.
Now that Hopkins’s former roommate is refusing to testify, it’s highly probable that all charges will be dropped against him, Stoll told reporters.
Four nabbed for sex trafficking
A cruel quartet who raped, beat and forced a young Orthodox woman into prostitution for eight years — beginning when she was 13 — are facing more than 20 years in prison apiece, now that they’ve been indicted on rape and sex-trafficking charges.
During a press conference on June 29, DA Charles Hynes said that Damien Crooks, 31; Jamali Brockett, 27; Jawara Brockett, 33; and Darrell Dula, 24, all played a part in the litany of crimes brought upon the victim — who, at 21, finally broke her silence and told prosecutors about her horrific adolescence.
Hynes said Crooks and the younger Brockett met the girl in a Crown Heights park when she was 13. The two allegedly raped her in the park, then forced her into a life of prostitution.
The young teen was still living at home, but would sneak out when they called her to have sex with strangers for money. When she refused, they would allegedly beat her, rape her and force her to perform sexually humiliating acts, investigators said. When that didn’t work, they told her that they would harm her parents, Hynes explained.
Yet, through it all, the young woman made it through high school and went to college, where she confided in her professor about her secret life. The teacher encouraged her to call the DA’s sex trafficking hotline.
Since his sex trafficking unit was formed a year ago, 26 indictments have been brought against the brutal pimps who force young boys and girls into prostitution, Hynes said.
“Word is getting out that if you are a victim, we will protect you. If you are a pimp, we will catch you, and when we do, we will aggressively prosecute you and seek the maximum sentences,” Hynes said.
