Due to his participation in a human trafficking organization that recruited two Lithuanian girls with learning disabilities to work as prostitutes in Ireland, a Lithuanian man was sentenced to prison.
In November, Darius Musinskas (54), who had spent over 20 years living in Ireland, was returned to his own country to answer to the charges of human trafficking.
Two weeks ago, Musinskas, whose family still resides in Ireland, was found guilty and given a one-and-a-half year prison term.
A judge rejected his assertion that he didn’t intend to benefit from his role, even though he confessed it.
Authorities discovered that in 2011, along with other countrymen Kestutis Laurynas and Stanislovas Ruskus, he was a member of an organized organization that hired two vulnerable 18-year-old twin sisters with learning disabilities to work as prostitutes in Ireland.
In connection with the case, Laurynas, who had previously resided in Ireland, was given a four-and-a-half-year prison term for human trafficking in 2013, while Ruskus’s criminal case was dropped the same year because he passed away in Sweden.
The gang convinced the sisters to travel to Ireland in the spring of 2011 and work as prostitutes.
One of the young girls was allegedly approached shortly after she received her high school diploma. She was offered false assurances and promised she would be taken care of and enjoy a trouble-free stay in Ireland. She told her sister, and she confirmed that she would go.
The court was informed that both teenagers were poor, immature, and unable to aggressively reject their circumstances.
They informed their mum that they would be working on an Irish strawberry farm.
Musinskas acknowledged that Laurynas called him and asked him to buy the teenagers’ tickets from Riga, Latvia, to Dublin, Ireland, arrange for their lodging there, purchase clothing and cosmetics for them, and meet them there when they arrived.
Musinskas asserted he had no intention of making money off the girls’ prostitution and was unaware of their financial troubles and academic challenges.
Everyone supports one another, he remarked. He claimed that he simply offered his assistance because Laurynas asked him to because everyone in the Lithuanian community lends a hand.
His denials that he intended to make money off the operation, however, were refuted by the evidence acquired by the investigators.
The court determined that phone evidence demonstrated that Musinskas intentionally corresponded with Laurynas, discussed committing a crime, purchased the plane tickets, and waited for the girls to arrive knowing he would have to look after and supervise them as they worked as prostitutes.
During one phone call, Laurynas informed Musinskas that the girls had been escorted and that the driver who transported them to the airport had been given 100 litas.
In the taped chat, Musinskas inquired as to whether the youngsters had undergone medical examinations, and his accomplice gave him the reassurance that they had.
When they were discussing whether the girls would follow orders, Musinskas snapped that they would pay attention to him.
On April 28, 2011, while traveling to Riga Airport in a van carrying the two victims, Lithuanian border agents halted it at the Latvian border.
When the girls couldn’t tell the guards where they were going and the driver of the automobile gave evasive responses, the guards became suspicious.
The girls were taken away from the car’s driver by the guards after they declared that they were not traveling to Ireland freely and could be seen to be trembling.
After Laurynas was imprisoned in 2013, gardai contacted Musinskas in Ireland in 2014 to inform him that a pre-trial investigation was being conducted in Lithuania against him.
He said he misled Irish officials by saying he was requested to purchase tickets for the teenagers by an unidentified source.
He acknowledged using his wife’s credit card to pay for the plane tickets, but he made up an excuse that he was only trying to be helpful because he felt bad for the girls.
He was then ordered to appear in Lithuanian, but he claimed to have disregarded the order since he had family and children in Ireland.
He later resisted extradition, but it happened in November.
He was facing a term of between 4 and 12 years for his involvement in human trafficking, but according to the Lithuanian news outlet Lyrtas, Judge Nerijus Masiulis of the Siauliai District Court will instead impose a sentence of one and a half years.
The mitigating factors included Musinskas’ admission of guilt, his prior and subsequent employment history, the length of time that had gone since the incident, and the fact that he had not subsequently committed any other crimes while residing in Ireland.
