NY- The Manhattan lawyer suspected of keeping a stable of underage sexual playthings-for-hire wanted to brand the girls with tattoos of his name, three of his accusers told the Daily News.
Speaking out for the first time, a young woman who said she was victimized by James Colliton beginning when she was 15 said he pressured her to tattoo his first and middle names across the small of her back.
“It was a fantasy,” said the young woman, who recently turned 21. “It was his way of putting his stamp on you, branding you.
“He’d get girls to get ‘James Patrick’ inked right above their butts,” she added. “Above his name would be a Jaguar, the car, and a pony. … Cars and horses, his two loves. I wouldn’t do it, but he was always asking, saying he would pay.”
It was the latest sordid account to emerge since Thursday, when authorities publicly accused the married suburban father of five of paying for sex with two underage sisters allegedly pimped out by their mom.
Colliton, who tried to flee to Canada last month and was freed because of a paperwork snafu, was nabbed in an East Village hotel Friday when the desk clerk recognized his photo in the Daily News and called cops.
The two sisters, now 21 and 14, told The News that Colliton also urged them to get the tatoos.
“I wasn’t going to put his name on my body. It was like labeling the girls. He made us his property,” the 21-year-old said.
“I wouldn’t do it, no matter what,” said her sister, who turns 15 this month.
But the sisters said there were other girls who gave in to the sick demands – at least a half dozen put his name variously on their arms, stomach or lower back, they said.
Colliton’s newest accuser, a petite blond, wiped tears as she described how the $500,000-a-year lawyer wooed her with cash and gifts to be his sex slave for a year and a half.
She said she met the pudgy Poughkeepsie man in late 2000. Her parents were dead, she’d dropped out of school, fled foster care and had nowhere to go.
She said a friend at an escort agency introduced the desperate teen to Colliton.
“He gave me his number and said, ‘You could make more money if you see me on your own,'” she recalled. “So I did.”
She was 15.
She said she would visit Colliton two to three times a week for sex at a rented studio apartment on 55th St. between Third and Lexington Aves.
“He called them ‘arrangements.’ He would schedule different girls on different nights. Sometimes, he would get away at lunch time. You were expected to be there and be ready,” she said.
She said she’d meet other women – some in their 20s, others clearly teenagers – coming and going from the sex pad.
She estimates she saw 20 of them over time, and said they would compare notes, learning about the tattoo requests and other shared degradations.
She knew he was married – she said he showed her photos of his children. He spent weekends with the wife and kids in Poughkeepsie, returning to Manhattan on Sunday night, the woman said.
“He wanted me to move there with him. He said, ‘You have no place to live. Let me take care of you.’ But I was uncomfortable with that. Something in me didn’t want it to seem like a real relationship. So I told him I wanted him to get me my own apartment,” she said.
The woman said Colliton paid $1,700 a month for an apartment on E. 48th St. for the 5-foot-3 beauty, who has a model’s high-forehead and perfectly arched brows.
“He was always saying things like, ‘Look at this life. You never have to work. You never have to get up in the morning. If you want to live a life without any responsibilities, this is a good life. This is the way,'” she said.
There were gifts: a Tiffany gold bracelet and diamond-encrusted sapphire and emerald necklaces. And every month there was $4,300 cash for food and expenses, she said. “Always cash. Usually, the first of the month,” she added.
For her part, she was on call two to three nights a week.
The woman said he’d take her to Broadway plays – “Cabaret” and “Chicago” – and bought floor seats for a dozen Knicks games from one of his colleagues at the high-powered law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore. He no longer works there.
“The life that he gives you is really grownup,” she said, clutching her arms.
But it made her feel empty. She was about to turn 17 in 2002 when a friend said he could get her a job answering phones in an office for $1,000 a month.
“But it was an honest job. It was a chance. So I moved out. I left. Now, looking back, I feel sick. Sick that he preyed on kids who didn’t know any better,” said the young woman who has her own job, apartment and boyfriend.
Still, she said, Colliton would call her, tell her he loved her and ask her to come back to him. The most recent call was last month – a few days before her 21st birthday. He called offering a “birthday gift,” she said.
“I said I was busy and I’d call him back,” she said. “I never did.”
The young woman praised the two sisters who are cooperating with authorities.
“I never would have come forward,” she said. “Who would believe me over this powerful man, this lawyer? No one.
“They’d call me a liar.”