James Amato was sentenced this month in connection with a sex trafficking ring in Great Falls.

He entered an an Alford plea in February.

An Alford plea isn’t an admission of guilt but the defendant acknowledges there’s enough evidence to convict.

Amato was arrested in February 2024 and charged with felony counts of sexual assault; promoting prostitution; endangering the welfare of a child; criminal endangerment, criminal possession of dangerous drugs and accountability for criminal distribution of dangerous drugs.

William Allery was also charged with felony counts of sexual intercourse without consent; promoting prostitution; endangering the welfare of a child; criminal endangerment; and tampering with a witness or informants.

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Allery’s case is pending and his trial in the trafficking case is currently set for June.

Both were arrested mid-February 2024 and Allery remains in the Cascade County Adult Detention Center.

Amato was released in December with conditions, including GPS monitoring, and has been living in Helena.

During a Feb. 18 court hearing, District Court Judge Elizabeth Best accepted Amato’s plea and set sentencing for April 1.

In the plea agreement, Amato entered an Alford plea to felony counts of endangering the welfare of a child, criminal possession of dangerous drugs and accountability for criminal distribution of dangerous drugs.

For each of the three counts, the Cascade County Attorney’s Office recommended a five year prison sentence, consecutive to any other count and case, and obtaining a chemical dependency evaluation and following all recommendations, at his own expense.

Best sentenced Amato to a five year prison sentence for each count, consecutive, suspended, with credit for 303 days spent in the county jail.

In her order, Best wrote that the sentence is consistent with the plea agreement and considered that Adult Probation and Parole assessed Amato to have a moderate risk of reoffending.

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“It considers the impact on the victims. [Amato] preyed on a minor child, a girl, her for sexual activity, exposed her to pornography, and exposed her to dangerous drugs, including expecting her to participate in distributing those drugs. His conduct was unconscionable,” Best wrote in her sentencing order.

Michelle Levine, the county attorney prosecuting the case, said during the February hearing that she would offer the victim the opportunity to make an impact statement at sentencing, but was unsure if the victim would be willing to do so.

Levine said the plea agreement calls for prison time suspended due to the victim’s non-cooperation, which she said the court was aware of.

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Levine said in February that she and an investigating detective had recently visited the victim, who was being held at the Juvenile Detention Center, and she reiterated that she does not want to cooperate.

Levine said the victim made it clear that she is struggling with her mental health and addiction and didn’t want to relive the trauma at trial.

In October, the victim was deposed at the JDC, during which Amato and Allery were present as required by their constitutional right to confront their accuser, according to prosecutors.

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Levine said the victim did not wish to relive that and prosecutors don’t want to retraumatize the victim by making her appear in court.

“She does not believe that will be helpful for her healing process,” Levine said in February.

While the victim’s unwillingness to cooperate limits the prosecution’s ability to pursue some of the charges, Levine said the agreement gets some accountability for Amato.

Levine said in February that trial would be unpredictable for both sides and juries sometimes punish uncooperative victims and don’t hold offenders accountable and those were some of the reasons for the plea agreement.

The victim’s great grandparents filed a victim impact statement on her behalf that was sealed by the court.

Molly Woodman, Amato’s defense attorney, said in February that he’d had some difficult medical issues and was seeing a doctor in Helena regularly, “to keep him alive, to put it bluntly,” so the defense asked, and court agreed, to have his GPS monitoring removed.

Levine said the prosecution was okay with that since under the plea agreement, if Amato doesn’t comply with the conditions, the state won’t be bound by the plea agreement and could continue prosecution.

The victim’s grandmother contacted The Electric about the October deposition. To protect the identity of the victim, we are not naming the grandmother either.

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The deposition was held to get the victim’s testimony in case she ran away before the trial that had been previously scheduled.

The victim’s grandmother attended and told The Electric that the victim was questioned for roughly six hours with Allery and Amato sitting just a few feet away, staring at her from across the table.

Allery didn’t have an attorney present, but Woodman, Amato’s attorney, “asked questions including why she was on probation, where she got her clothing, and who she sold drugs for. [The victim] was made to feel like a criminal.  She finally shut down and could not finish. She was sobbing, shaking, and begging to be taken back to the JDC,” the victim’s grandmother told The Electric. “Court trials for rape victims are as traumatic as the assault. Victims are forced to relive the attacks. They have to talk about it in front of numerous people and on camera. [The victim] is a child. She is terrified. She is being held in the JDC. She has numerous mental health issues which are not being addressed. I believe she is currently a victim of the justice system in Great Falls, and this [deposition] was exceedingly harmful.”

According to the charging documents, a Great Falls Police detective conducted a forensic interview with a then 15-year-old girl on Feb. 14, 2024 who told detectives about a man named “Bill,” later identified as Allery.

The girl said she met Allery through another boy when she was on the run and doing drugs. The boy told her Allery could help her “get into the game and make money.”

She told detectives that Allery advised her she could sell sex, according to court documents.

The victim told detectives that she went to meet Allery and the other boy also took her to “Tony’s” house where he had a hot tub in his garage, near Super 1 Foods. Tony was later identified as Amato, according to court documents.

The victim told detectives that Allery lived behind Poppy’s on 15th Street South and he would have her have sex with other men to get money and drugs, according to court documents.

She told detectives that other girls were at Amato’s residences to have sex with men, “like it was their job,” according to court documents.

The victim told detectives that Allery raped her multiple times and that she didn’t know all of the other men who also raped her, according to court documents.

She said that Allery threatened to hurt her mother if she told anyone about what was happening, according to court documents.

The victim told detectives that Allery gave her drugs for having sex with him and that he injected what he said was meth into her arm, according to court documents.

At Amato’s, she told detectives that she was raped in the hot tub in the garage by multiple men and she was afraid they would hurt her.

A GFPD detective drove the victim to the 2500 block of 11th Avenue South where she had left her backpack in a dark SUV. She told detectives that she had underwear in the bag that were dirty and would have forensic evidence on them, according to court documents.

GFPD officers later spotted the SUV and saw drug paraphernalia in the vehicle, which was impounded.

Detectives also drove the victim to an apartment building in the 1000 block of 5th Avenue North where she said she had left other belongings, including a phone she had used to communicate with Allery.

Detectives drove the victim to Amato’s house in the 3200 block of 9th Avenue South and officers contacted area neighbors who said there had been “odd comings and goings” from the house in the alley, specifically the garage, that the garage light was frequently on in the middle of the night, that multiple vehicles show up in the middle of the night in the alley and sit for awhile, and that people go into the garage for a short time, then leave, according to court documents.

“They all said they noticed ‘sketchy’ people show up to the garage in the alley at all hours of the night,” according to court documents.

Amato has a previous criminal record, having been convicted in 2015 in a federal case of methamphetamine trafficking. He was sentenced in 2016 to seven years in federal prison followed by four years of supervised release.

U.S. Bureau of Prisons records indicate he was released from prison in 2019 and the federal court system records indicate he completed supervised release in early 2023.

During the 2015 investigation, during which Amato was a woman’s source of meth, Amato told investigators that he cut down the meth because he felt bad for females he was selling it to, that he gave money back to one woman because he felt bad for her, that he allowed some of the girls to stay in his garage overnight while his wife was sleeping in the house, according to court documents.

In a subsequent interview with the victim, she told detectives that Allery and Amato kept the money from other men who had sex with her. She said Allery and Amato believed her to be 16, but found out she was 15 and still raped her, according to court documents.

The victim told detectives that Amato tried to have sex with her, but she declined, but he had her touch him and that he had videos of himself having sex with other girls.