Teen escapes alleged pimp; W. Boylston girl found beaten.

• Position: NEWS

Byline: Priyanka Dayal

A battered 17-year-old West Boylston girl, allegedly kidnapped and forced into prostitution by a New York man, was found in a Boston neighborhood early Wednesday morning, police said.

According to a Boston police report, the girl ran away from a substance-abuse program in Lawrence in April and was working as a prostitute in Boston until Michael A. Smith Jr. of Flushing, N.Y., took her to a Long Island hotel.

There, the girl told police, she was made to work as a prostitute without pay for several days. She said Mr. Smith, the alleged pimp, slapped and hit her regularly, and threatened to kill her when she tried to run away.

Mr. Smith drove the girl back to Massachusetts, the police report says, and she fled his Infiniti sedan at a stop sign in the Oak Square section of Brighton. Boston police discovered her a few minutes before 3 a.m. Wednesday. Police said the girl had cuts and scratches on her arm, finger marks on her neck and a swollen cheek, and was sent to Children's Hospital, Boston.

West Boylston Police Sgt. Anthony Papandrea confirmed the girl was a resident of West Boylston, where she lived with her father and a sibling in a home with a history of domestic violence issues.

"She has a history of running away," he said, though she has never been arrested by West Boylston police.

Sgt. Papandrea said his last interaction with the family was March 21, when he responded to a domestic disturbance at their home. The girl had allegedly been abused by her father, he said. Police notified the Department of Social Services, and the girl was taken to UMass Memorial Hospital - University Campus in Worcester for an emergency mental health evaluation.

After the girl was sent to UMass in late March, West Boylston police had no contact with her.

Boston police said they don't know how long she was at the rehabilitation center in Lawrence before escaping sometime in April. When police found the girl at 433 Washington St. in Boston on Wednesday morning, she...