A hooker in high-heeled sandals turned a new trick in a Manhattan courtroom today.
Blond-maned Desiree Ellis popped in to help defend a team of father-son pimps against charges that they brutally forced her and four other young women into their lucrative prostitution ring.
When a defense lawyer gave her a nod, Ellis waved her turquoise nails to the courtroom audience and smiled as the attorney insisted that Vincent George Sr., 56, and Vincent George Jr., 34, are not money-laundering sex-traffickers.
“Of course they are trying to recruit prostitutes,” George Sr.’s lawyer, Howard Greenberg, told Judge Ruth Pickholz during opening statements at the pair’s non-jury trial. “That’s a given in this case . . . So what? Big deal.”
Greenberg then pointed to Ellis sitting in the second row.
“These women, simply put, worked as hoes because they wanted to. They are not victims,’’ the lawyer said.
Ellis, who is in her mid-20s, smiled and waved.
“I’m not a victim towards anything, and I think the best way to show and prove that is for me to be here,’’ Ellis, dressed in white slacks and a white zip-up jacket, said outside court.
She and the Georges’ stable of four other hookers have already vowed to testify on their behalf.
Prosecutors say the men ran a ruthless two-state ring that threatened the women with violence if they left, “branded’’ them with tattoos and referred to them as “animals.”
“I just sent three of my animals out, so let’s see what the wolves are doing tonight,’’ one of the men allegedly said, according to a recorded phone call.
Prosecutor Kim Han said the women were thought of as “domesticated sex work horses.”
Still, there is one potentially major hurdle for authorities. Their first witness, a lead detective in the case, testified that her notes and other evidence she collected were missing — likely due to flooding from Hurricane Sandy.
But prosecutors are plowing ahead, charging that the dad, of Queens, was so twisted that he taught his son, of Allentown, Pa., how to pimp — and may have even employed his own daughter as a hooker.