Brooklyn prosecutors are throwing in the towel on a sensational sex-trafficking case in which four men were accused of preying on a troubled young Orthodox Jewish woman for years, a lawyer for one of the men said yesterday.
The headline-grabbing case began crumbling in April, when two suspects, Darrell Dula and Damien Crooks, were sprung from jail amid allegations that prosecutors failed to tell their lawyers that their accuser had retracted her rape claims just a day after making them in March 2010.
James Phillips, a lawyer for Dula, told The Post that prosecutors informed him that the charges against all four defendants will be dismissed Tuesday.
“Mr. Dula is obviously pleased with the news, but wonders why he had to spend almost a year in jail because prosecutors hid evidence he was innocent,” Phillips said.
DA Charles Hynes declined comment.
Crooks and Dula, along with brothers Jamali and Jawara Brockett, were charged last June with raping the woman and prostituting her for eight years, starting when she was 13.
The woman, now 22, had gone to prosecutors in 2010, claiming the four had turned her into a sex slave, but recanted almost immediately.
Hynes’ top sex-trafficking prosecutor, Lauren Hersh, quit just weeks after the case began unraveling.