Sex-Crazed Culinary Author Convicted For Imprisoning Young Women

It’s such a tragedy that so many young women from foreign countries are victimized by promises of a career and easy riches in America.

Joseph Yannai, 68, who self-published “The International Who’s Who of Chefs 2004-2005,” was recently convicted after luring naive young foreign women to his $800,000 New York home and then molesting them.

Prosecutors said Yannai enticed recent high school graduates from Hungary, Mexico and Denmark to serve as so-called assistants, but once they arrived he attempted to turn the young women — who ranged in age from 18 to 22 — into sex slaves.

Five women who worked for Yannai from 2003 to 2009 testified that he molested them. According to The New York Post, two of the women sobbed on the stand during Yannai’s trial last year as they relived the nightmare.

“They were psychological prisoners, alone in a strange country with little money and no friends,” said U.S. District Judge Edward Korman.

Based on information gathered from the indictment, Yannai controlled all aspects of the women’s lives, including limiting their contacts with the outside world, monitoring their telephone calls and forbidding them from wearing bras.

But Yannai disputed the conviction, saying any sexual contact between the women was consensual. He appeared in court in a wheelchair, wearing beige prison attire, and refused to speak; his lawyer said he intended to appeal.

Prosecutors had asked Judge Korman to sentence him to up to 30 years. Although the sentence could have been the maximum 80-years, Yannai was only sentenced to 11 years, just below the minimum called for in federal guidelines because of his failing health.

“Luring the women, often under the pretense that they would work as au pairs was his life’s work,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Spector said.

Yannai was convicted for a variety of offenses, including coercion and enticement under the Mann Act, forced labor, fraud in labor contracting, unlawful employment of aliens, importation of aliens for immoral purposes, and inducement of an alien to illegally enter and reside in the United States.

Yannai, who has twice tried to kill himself in custody, will serve at least an additional eight years in prison, counting the nearly three years he has served.