Pennsylvania Sex Slavery Ring Shut Down

The slave next door: women trafficked from Mexico and Ecuador have been rescued from brothels run by alleged Mexican drug dealers in the Pennsylvania borough of Norristown, a few short miles northwest of Philadelphia.

One woman was held captive at a brothel located just down the street from a neighborhood elementary school.

In a recent press conference the Montgomery County District Attorney described the large-scale drug and prostitution ring organized by five illegal aliens arrested in the case:

[District Attorney Ferman] said houses at 566 Kohn St. and 34 East Oak St. were used for prostitution, and she showed pictures of the sparsely furnished interiors. One small, partitioned room had a blanket hanging in place of a door. A single mattress took up most of the room’s modest floor space.

When the residences were raided in May [2009], two Mexican women were discovered at the Kohn Street house; a woman from Ecuador was inside the East Oak Street residence.

“This is the way these women were forced to live, but really, there is no privacy,” the DA said.

Saturdays and Mondays were the busiest times for the Norristown brothels, according to authorities. The men paid $30 to a doorman, who handed out tickets that the men gave the women, reports indicate.

Eventually, the prostitutes would exchange their accumulated tickets for $15 a piece, according to reports.

“On Monday, they would start with a fresh crop of girls,” Ferman said. “Fifteen minutes at a time.”

Hernandez-Garcia, Gonzales-Sosa and Guzman-Hernandez were allegedly employed by Castillo to run the day-to-day operations at the houses. The men controlled the women inside the residences and threatened them with violence, authorities allege.

“The women were beaten if they didn’t comply,” she said.

Castillo, who had been deported from the United States twice and returned, reportedy told investigators there was a “circuit” across the U.S. that exploited women as prostitutes. Many women are recruited unwittingly in Mexico with the promise of a better life in America, he reportedly said.

Hearing The Chains Of Modern-Day Slavery In Montana

Inspiring story out of Montana. High school student Tierney Strandberg steps up and teaches us all about the difference even one person can make to change the world, by changing one mind at a time.

The beginning of the journey sounds innocuous enough: the young student read a book while she was home sick. Yet that book seems to have left its mark on her, giving her a sense of mission that she probably didn't expect to find when she started it. Not for the first time, random chance introduced someone to the problem of modern-day slavery, and an unexpected passion was ignited by a surprising source.

Somaly Mam, enslaved as a child prostitute in Cambodia at the age of 12, had written about her decade-long half-life in South-East Asian brothels, as well as her efforts on behalf of girls still trapped in sexual slavery, in her 2008 book "The Road of Lost Innocence” (now in paperback). From her foundation's website:

Written in exquisite, spare, unflinching prose, The Road of Lost Innocence recounts the experiences of her early life and tells the story of her awakening as an activist and her harrowing and brave fight against the powerful and corrupt forces that steal the lives of these girls. She has orchestrated raids on brothels and rescued sex workers, some as young as five and six; she has built shelters, started schools, and founded an organization that has so far saved more than four thousand women and children in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos.

Montana high school student Tierney Strandberg said that after finishing the memoir she was "overwhelmed", eager to do something, anything, to help:

“I knew as an International Baccalaureate student, I would have access to people who would help,” Strandberg said. “People are interested [in international issues] and they have power in the school to do something about it.”

Then a further coincidence occurred. Shortly after her return to school, a representative of the Flathead Abolitionist Movement asked if the group that Strandberg was involved with could show “Call + Response,” a documentary about the global slave trade, at the school.

“I just about jumped out of my seat,” [coordinator Genia Allen-Schmid] said. “I said, ‘We have a student who wants to do this very thing.’”

Strandberg leapt at the opportunity to get involved with the abolitionist group. She started a corresponding student group, FAM at FHS, and has worked tirelessly to help the community group find ways to get high school students involved in the cause.
...
Strandberg is in a unique position of being able to raise awareness about human trafficking nearly every weekend. She is a member of Flathead’s speech and debate team, and her original oratory speech is all about modern-day slavery.

“It’s really cool to give my speech all over the state every weekend,” Strandberg said. “I’m trying to cultivate awareness. It’s really hard to realize as a teenage girl that this is happening all over the world — and people don’t know. Really, people don’t know.”

The judges who hear her speech are often shocked, she said. Judges give feedback on speeches, and Strandberg’s comments have ranged from, “I can’t believe I didn’t know about this,” to “You need to be president.”

Strandberg said she is just glad for the opportunity to raise awareness about such an important topic.

“I’m not necessarily changing the world, but I am making a difference, if even a small one,” she said. “I really believe in the power of one.”

How does that old expression put it...: "Being the Right Person, at the Right Place, at the Right Time"... When I was Ms. Strandberg's age I would have interpreted that saying to mean that favorable chance and good fortune are out of our control, yet hers is a case study in how one's own self-initiative, the spark of taking action, ennobles us to become the Right Person, it puts us at the Right Place, it assists us in finding the Right Time.

God Bless you, young lady, for believing you can make a difference: that belief has to come first, if the difference is to come later.

[An equally inspiring story of Illinois teenagers embracing the challenge to raise awareness of modern-day slavery, here.]

US Abolitionists: 19th Century Bloggers

When I first found and started to read the early 19th Century abolitionist newspapers of Benjamin Lundy ("The Genuis Of Universal Emancipation"), and William Lloyd Garrison's "The Abolitionist", I was struck by how much these 1820s and 1830s weekly and monthly journals felt like our modern-day blogs.

The formats are remarkably similar: Lundy and Garrison collected stories from regional (and occasionally, international) newspapers that related to their journals' themes, acting more as editors than reporters, much as bloggers do today (It was part of the "rules of the game" that editors shared their newspapers with each other through mailed subscriptions, and that proper credit would be given when one editor would reprint a story originally appearing in another's journal, exactly how linked stories are handled today); readers wrote in with their comments and observations, and their letters in turn were commented upon by the editor; meetings were "live-blogged" by having their minutes published in subsequent journal entries...

It seems the urge to blog on a theme of personal interest is "something old made new again".

I see that I'm not the first to make this observation; I'm in the middle of reading Merton L. Dillon's 1974 book, "Abolitionists: The Growth Of A Dissenting Minority", and while searching this morning for more information on the author, I came across this 2005 exchange between Professor Dillon and a former student of his, on the amazing resemblance between abolitionist journals and blogs.

Dillon compares the work of early abolionist writers to their modern-day counterparts, and perceptively concludes on a hopeful note that hadn't occured to me:

The problem, then, in an age lacking popular print or other conduits of information, was how to reach like-minded people. How can such people find each other? How can random and inchoate ideas be gathered from these sympathetic but disparate people and molded into an acceptable, rationally consistent program? Interchange of thought must be the process. What shall be the agency?

Beginning around 1820 small, shoestring newspapers began the process. [Benjamin] Lundy's [The Genius of Universal] Emancipation was one of the first and most long-lasting. Lundy sent his paper where he thought it might be welcomed. He printed exposes of the slave systen and proposed remedies. He invited readers to contribute their ideas. Later, [William Lloyd] Garrison did the same. The remedies were as varied as the critiques.

It took a while before antislavery advocates found each other and developed something like a community. It took still longer for them to forge a program. It is not ungenerous to conclude that, despite all their writing, all their speaking, all their conferring, they never were able to set forth a program for abolitionism that all opponents of slavery found acceptable, but they did create a society or community.
...
How do people find each other? Bloggers in quite systematic and lightning-speed fashion are taking advantage of the opportunities technology has given them to speed and share ideas and, potentially, to create societies all with a facility Abolitionists could not have dreamed of.

President Obama Declares January "National Slavery And Human Trafficking Prevention Month"

President Barack Obama proclaims February 1st shall be "National Freedom Day", and January shall be "National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month".

The United States was founded on the principle that all people are born with an unalienable right to freedom -- an ideal that has driven the engine of American progress throughout our history. As a Nation, we have known moments of great darkness and greater light; and dim years of chattel slavery illuminated and brought to an end by President Lincoln's actions and a painful Civil War.
Yet even today, the darkness and inhumanity of enslavement exists. Millions of people worldwide are held in compelled service, as well as thousands within the United States. During National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, we acknowledge that forms of slavery still exist in the modern era, and we recommit ourselves to stopping the human traffickers who ply this horrific trade.

As we continue our fight to deliver on the promise of freedom, we commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation, which became effective on January 1, 1863, and the 13th Amendment, which was sent to the States for ratification on February 1, 1865. Throughout the month of January, we highlight the many fronts in the ongoing battle for civil rights -- including the efforts of our Federal agencies; State, local, and tribal law enforcement partners; international partners; nonprofit social service providers; private industry and nongovernmental organizations around the world who are working to end human trafficking.

The victims of modern slavery have many faces. They are men and women, adults and children. Yet, all are denied basic human dignity and freedom. Victims can be abused in their own countries, or find themselves far from home and vulnerable. Whether they are trapped in forced sexual or labor exploitation, human trafficking victims cannot walk away, but are held in service through force, threats, and fear. All too often suffering from horrible physical and sexual abuse, it is hard for them to imagine that there might be a place of refuge.

We must join together as a Nation and global community to provide that safe haven by protecting victims and prosecuting traffickers. With improved victim identification, medical and social services, training for first responders, and increased public awareness, the men, women, and children who have suffered this scourge can overcome the bonds of modern slavery, receive protection and justice, and successfully reclaim their rightful independence.

Fighting modern slavery and human trafficking is a shared responsibility. This month, I urge all Americans to educate themselves about all forms of modern slavery and the signs and consequences of human trafficking. Together, we can and must end this most serious, ongoing criminal civil rights violation.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 2010 as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, culminating in the annual celebration of National Freedom Day on February 1. I call upon the people of the United States to recognize the vital role we can play in ending modern slavery, and to observe this month with appropriate programs and activities.

Let's hope this proclamation is not just posturing political theater, but the first step in an effective attempt at curtailing a growing evil.

Washington DC: Sex Slaves For Sale In Freedom's Capital City

Washington DC TV news station WJLA reports on a 19-year old woman recently freed from a life of sexual slavery in neighboring Anne Arundel County, and the difficulties involved in fighting sex trafficking even in the nation's capital:

'Alana' says she could not see a way out "because (she) was all the way out here, with no family, no money."
Experts say traffickers use that financial and psychological dependence to control the girls -- along with drugs and alcohol.
"And the next thing they know, it's like brick after brick and suddenly they're stuck behind this wall of exploitation," said Andrea Powell, the director of Fair Fund, a non-profit group that works with girls like Alana.
Powell says D.C. found 35 teen victims of commercial sexual exploitation last year, which is just the tip of the iceberg.
...
[U.S. Attorney for Maryland Rod Rosenstein] says the Maryland Human Trafficking Task Force was formed to combat the problem.
Accused traffickers are prosecuted under federal laws, which are tougher than state
laws. And law enforcement says it's important to recognize young girls as victims, instead of criminals.
"We don't want to take these 14-, 15-, 16-year-old girls and lock them up in jail," Rosenstein said. "It's not going to create the relationship that we want to develop with them so they'll work with us in prosecuting perpetrators of the trafficking violations."
Alana eventually broke free from prostitution. She has a job now and is considering
going back to school.
But she wants the world to know: "If you see girls outside late at night and you're wondering why are they outside and why are they dressed like that, sometimes it's not they're own choice, it's not their own fault," she said.

Video version of the story available here.

An unrelated report from NPR on under-age girls being sexually exploited in Washington DC, just blocks from the White House, how they are tattooed as a sign of ownership by their exploiters, and the shelter being established as a refuge for girls trafficked into the capital, can be heard here: Survivor Battles DC Teen Trafficking.

Washington DC is the capital of the free world, and it is outrageous to discover that the chains of modern-day slavery even extends there... establishing that it truly is everywhere.

How To Break The Chains Of Child Prostitution

"We, as a society, will not tolerate what basically amounts to selling these kids as sex slaves," said Arthur Balizan, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon. His remark was made after Operation Cross Country IV, a seasonal attempt to rescue children from the hellish bondage of sexual slavery in the United States of America. Sweeping raids are conducted in targeted areas of the country as part of the FBI's Innocence Lost National Initiative, in partnership with local law enforcement officials and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The latest result: 52 children freed from sexual slavery.

To date, the 34 Innocence Lost Task Forces and Working Groups have recovered nearly 900 children from the streets. The investigations and subsequent 510 convictions have resulted in lengthy sentences, including multiple 25-years-to-life sentences and the seizure of more than $3.1 million in assets.

Some newspapers are now following up on the current fate of the children rescued from prostitution; they report that one month later, very few of the victims are "receiving the help experts say is necessary to overcome such trauma and rejoin society."

The victims need intensive residential treatment, experts say, and only three such programs exist.
...
Lois Lee, founder of a 24-bed Los Angeles shelter called Children of the Night, sees the problems firsthand.
"When America's child prostitutes are identified by the FBI or police, they are incarcerated for whatever reason possible, whether it be an unrelated crime or 'material witness hold,' " she said. "Then they are dumped back in the dysfunctional home, ill-equipped group home or foster care, and [often] disappear back into the underground of prostitution with no voice."
...
Experts say that sex-trafficking victims struggle to find the care they need once they escape from an industry that may involve at least 100,000 U.S. children.
Donna Hughes, a women's studies professor at the University of Rhode Island who has researched U.S. sex trafficking, said domestic victims are shortchanged by the attention authorities and advocacy groups give to the illegal importation of foreign prostitutes.
"We need more treatment programs," she said. "There are a number of different programs that have existed for years, but they need more support."
Lisa Goldblatt Grace, who consulted on a 2007 study for the Health and Human Services Department, said child victims "lack a safe, stable place to live, and that's part of what made them vulnerable to begin with."
Grace is program director of the My Life My Choice Project, a nonprofit focused on reaching out to adolescent girls most vulnerable to commercial sexual exploitation.
The Health and Human Services Department study found only four residential treatment centers in the United States for child prostitutes, with a total of 45 beds.
...
[Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children ]said U.S. child victims numbered between 100,000 and 300,000.

The human race's capacity for inflicting cruelty upon itself knows no bounds; imagine the suffering of a young life so filled with misery that the evil of slavery can come to be seen as the Lesser of Evils...

Was Justice Done In Topeka Kansas?

Complicated case in Topeka, Kansas.

The owner of an Indian restaurant has been sentenced to three concurrent 18-month jail terms for harboring "unauthorized workers for commercial advantage or private financial gain", all 3 of whom were Indian nationals.

When the story first broke last year, the charges against 33-year old Amarpreet "Latti" Singh also included allegations that some of his restaurant staff were virtually being treated as slaves. None of these allegations of coercion ended up being proven in court, however, due to conflicting testimony presented at the trial.

According to an April press release from the US Department of Justice, "[p]rosecutors also presented evidence that the defendant withheld workers’ wages and identification documents. Workers were required to work long hours six days a week at the restaurant and live in an apartment the defendant provided."

The trial was triggered by the death of one of the owner's staff at this apartment:

One employee, Jacinta Sebastian Pereria, 45, whose body was found April 28, 2008, in a Topeka apartment Singh rented for his employees, had previously complained he was forced to work at the restaurant. Pereria died of acute pneumonia caused by bacteria, according to court records.

Earlier reports of Singh's indictment provide some contradictory accounts of that living and working relationship:

Jancintra Sebastian Pereria entered the United States with a tourist visa in June 2005. In April 2008, investigators said he was working nearly 70 hours per week as a waiter at the Globe making about $1,200 a month, occasionally wiring money to his wife. While he told the informant he wanted to return to India, Pereria said Singh wouldn't allow him to do so.
... Police discovered [Pereria] in the bathroom of the residence wearing a waiter's uniform from the Globe [restaurant]. The affidavit states Singh initially denied Pereria worked for him, despite keeping the man's identification and passport at the restaurant. Court documents state Singh told police Pereria was a homeless drunk he took in because they happened to have a common Indian origin.

At the trial, testimony given by a special agent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Pereria's unlawful working conditions was countered by a Topeka attorney's statements on behalf of the accused restaurant owner. The defense witness, "[...who] has known Singh for five years and eaten at the restaurant on a daily basis, said he never saw Singh threaten or coerce his employees. "It was a collegial relationship that I saw," Benson said. Singh treated employees with respect and sponsored a birthday party for Pereria, which was "well received" by Pereria and other employees, he said. Benson was one of six witnesses who testified on Singh's behalf."

What is a bystander to make of this story? Who are we to believe? Character witnesses saying that the accused is a nice guy and a good family man isn't necessarily proof that he isn't morally capable of holding people in coerced servitude. After all, even George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were slave owners, establishing that ".... one may smile, and smile, and be a villain." [Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5]

Is this a case of proven innocence, or unproven guilt? I don't know enough to have an opinion, so I've tried to be objective in my post on the outcome of the trial.

There are some that are in a better position to deliver an informed opinion, and yet even they are divided. The restaurant's current and former customers have been giving their verdicts online, courtesy of restaurant review sites. (The Globe restaurant has remained open throughout the trial) While researching the story, I found this one-star review by "Dennis", posted back in December 2008 as a comment on the more serious charges against the restaurant's owner:

I believe Singh did this! I always blew off his bad people skills when I ate there before. The food was delicious, after all, so I just braced myself for the bad service...
I feel for the people who had to live under Singh's form of abduction! I feel for the family of the man who died. I remember seeing these people working for him. I remember Jancintra, who was sometimes the only waiter working the restaurant. I tried to tip him directly, as I would see Singh clear the tables.
Now I understand that Singh was trying to keep the tips. Boycott The Globe! I just can't believe the number of people who will still eat there. I guess the idea of human rights escapes some people.

To be fair, there are plenty of positive judgements that balance against Dennis' negative one, including this recent November 2009 review reproduced verbatim at the restaurant's website [typos in the original]:

Currently, Latti Singh awaits sentencing. As media sponges, we are free to believe that he was exploiting a worker that died. We are also free to believe that the worker just became sick adn that the Immigration Naturalization Service, under the Bush Administration, were urged to prosecute anything that looked suspicious. Or, we can ignor the media altogether and forgo the burden of personally judging the guild or innocence of a man. We can carefully choose to bring our business to a family that benefits from our help and support - now as they struggle with the court system, and in the coming months as a patriach could be removed from the family who depends on him.

Our money is powerful. Not only can we withhold it from the things we disapprove of, but we can also use it to support the things we believe in: hard-working people, local business, invigorating the culture of Topeka, and a family that needs the support of its community.

The owner may not be guilty of the serious charges of exploitation, but he was found guilty of employing illegal aliens at his restaurant. What about the breadwinners of local families that need "the support of its community", who weren't hired as waiters because the owner was using illegal immigrant labor instead..? Those unappetizing facts are evidently of little nutritional value as far as that diner was concerned...

A tangential outcome of the case was the discovery of how widespread such hiring practices appear to be in the Kansas City area. In January of this year it was reported that Singh "reportedly told officers that if he ever needed illegal workers, he could call most any Indian restaurant in the area and receive help."

"Singh stated that when he lets one of the other owners know that he needs help, he knows that he will be getting someone who is not authorized to work in the United States," read an investigative report of the interview.
....
During the interview, Singh talked about the three people he is alleged to have harbored. He said one of them was delivered to Topeka by the owner of a Kansas City Indian restaurant, whom Singh had worked with during his time in the Kansas City area.
"Singh stated that it didn't matter if he called Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City or any other city, if he needed workers he could always get workers," the document read.

Nigerian Mother Kept Enslaved By Texas Family?

The slave next door: husband and wife Emmanuel and Ngozi Nnaji have been charged by Federal authorities with keeping a Nigerian woman in domestic servitude against her will for the last nine years.

Their Arlington, Texas neighbors were shocked to learn that within their neighborhood, there lived a slave: a widowed, semi-literate Nigerian woman, with six children left behind in Africa, is alleged to have been held against her will from 1997 until being rescued in February 2006.

It is alleged that the Nigerian woman's passport and visa were taken from her by the couple, who also threatened her into working 15-16 hour days, seven days a week. She had been lured into her inescapable servitude with false promises that the Nnaji's would support her six children back in Nigeria, one of whom had been suffering from sickle cell anemia, and in desperate need of regular doses of medication. This payment was only done infrequently when at all, according to the woman's relatives in her African home town.

A video report on the story can be seen here.

The criminal complaint introduced by an agent of the FBI's Human Trafficking division alleges that the woman "cared for [the Texas family's] baby day and night, cooked, and cleaned. [She] washed all the dishes by hand because she was not allowed to use the dishwasher. The Nnajis did not allow [her] to use the vacuum cleaner and required [her] to clean the carpet with a broom... The Nnajis had two more children. [She] then cared for all three children, cooked, cleaned, laundered the clothes, and performed yard work. [She] slept very little because she was always required to work...

"Emmanuel forced [her] to engage in sexual acts which Emmanuel told [her] she could never report because she would get into trouble..."

"[She] reported her situation, including the sexual abuse, to a niece in Nigeria in a phone conversation during which [she] hid in a closet. Not long after this conversation, [she] was contacted by a Nigerian priest residing in Texas. [She] and the priest planned her escape and in February 2006, [she] met the priest on a street corner with a bad filled with personal belongings."

The CBS news site suggests that the incident took place somewhere in the 1500 block of Green Hill Drive, a seemingly quiet, restful neighborhood that looks like this (courtesy of googlemaps):

Who could imagine that the spectre of slavery could haunt such a place?? If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere.