BROOKLYN — Assistant District Attorney Lauren Hersh resigned this week from the sex-trafficking unit she helped to found, after a headline-grabbing rape case she was handling began to fall apart, the New York Daily News reported.
Her departure comes less than a month after it was discovered that the victim — an Orthodox Jewish woman who accused four black men of turning her out as a teenager after repeatedly beating and raping her — had recanted her statement shortly after coming forward, according to the New York Post.
Two of the accused, Darrell Dula, 25, and Damien Crooks, 32, were released last month after spending more than a year in jail.
Defense and prosecutors agreed the DA had erred in withholding the information that led to their arrest in 2011. All four men still face criminal charges, but the case has been passed to ADA Rebecca Gingold.
Hersh was not asked to resign, the DA"s office told the Daily News. A relative told the paper that Hersh had been planning to leave for months, with plan to develop a program to reintegrate trafficking victims into the community.