19-year-old prostitute gets RM4.2m after being ‘sexually victimised’ by 30 cops

JASMINE Abuslin of Oakland, California was underage when she started her sex trysts, under the name Celeste Guap.
Dozens of police officers had sex with her at 16, and Abuslin claims only three officers actually paid her money for sex, while others offered food like Cheeto crisps, as payment.
Apart from encouraging her "profession", she says an officer even tried to act as her pimp, aside to confessing to having sex in the patrol car.
An officer even warned her off roads where other agencies were carrying out undercover police work to catch prostitutes – all their communications were exchanged on Facebook and text messages, which she kept.
She opened up about her encounters last year after a suicide case in 2015 involving one of the police officers, Brendan O'Brien, after she contacted police to expose him, according to Daily Mail. He wrote a suicide note, confessing that he and other officers had been sexually involved with her.
Abuslin filed a lawsuit against the city in August last year claiming she was "sexually victimised and exploited" by the officers, and the story of her sex scandal has led to the charge of seven current and former officers, with one pleading guilty.
On Wednesday, the court reached a settlement worth nearly US$1 million with the Oakland City Council as the officers allegedly violated at least 11 federal and six state laws, paying to have sex with a minor.
She was awarded US$989,000 (RM4.2mil) in damages by the court in the Californian city – a fraction of the US$66mil she had been asking for – with about a third of it going to the attorney fees.
"The settlement occurred with no admission of liability, but obviously if you pay US$1 million, you figure you got some responsibility," said her lawyer John Burris.
"I never came up with those numbers, those large numbers, I never came up with those," Jasmine said, as reported by ABC7.
While the public is disgusted by the police officers' misconduct, Oakland City Council member-at-large Rebecca Kaplan said, "We need to ensure that we are building the conditions that make it possible to have trust and healing between the community and our law enforcement officers, and cut sexual misconduct and other forms of abuse.
"It's time to pay the settlement agreement to let this young woman get on with her life and her healing, but also for Oakland to step up and change the culture in the police department and change how we recruit and train our officers."
Abuslin is no longer a prostitute. Now, she plans to return to school, and hopes to one day work with animals.