Forced Labor News from December

Throughout the month, there are many cases or stories that break regarding forced labor. They are usually not on the front pages of our newspapers, rather they are buried deep and sometimes are only accessible through the internet. These are some of the stories, both headline articles and those that are not, from December.

A couple in South Florida was sentenced for forcing almost 40 Filipinos to work in country clubs and hotels. The couple pleaded guilty to crimes such as visa fraud. The workers had their passports confiscated and were not allowed to leave their living quarters without an escort. The victims were also deprived of their wages and proper medical care.

A woman from Russia is suing a man she married in California for forcing her and her daughter into slave labor. She met the man through an online dating service. Within weeks of moving to the US, the man and his son began beating the women and forcing them to work seven days a week performing tasks such as moving large rocks on the father's rural property.

Carmakers have until January 31st to make comments on proposed regulations to prevent the use of conflict minerals in the production of vehicles. Some of the mines where minerals such as tin and tungsten are extracted employ slave and child labor.

A journalist from Hong Kong claims that Local Communist Party officials in the Sichuan Province of China are behind an organization that kidnapped people who were homeless or mentally disabled and forced them into slave labor. The investigation suggests that some of the victims were shocked, beaten and forced to live in very poor conditions.

During an INTERPOL operation, 140 victims of child labor were discovered in Gabon. The operation focused on victims exploited in the local markets, but the children were from a total of 10 different countries. More then 44 suspected traffickers were arrested. The children were forced to do various tasks including carrying heavy items and selling goods.

A jury in Brooklyn awarded a Hindu priest $2 million after finding he had been forced to work in a temple in Corona, NY for 7 years. He worked up to 18 hours a day doing everything from ministering to construction work and was only paid $50 a week amounting to merely $21,000 over seven years. His passport was confiscated and was told he would be arrested if he left.

Police in Florida raided two houses and found 27 potential victims of human trafficking. Police believe the victims were forced to work at a buffet restaurant. Though there are not many details at this time, neighbors noticed that there were many people living at the two houses and that white vans would pick up people early in the morning and would not return until very late at night.

The United States Department of Labor added a dozen countries to its list of countries that use forced or child labor. On a positive note, the department suggest that the number of child laborers is decreasing. Some of the more common products on the list include cotton, sugar, diamonds and gold. You can see the full report here.

Two British firms, Cargill Cotton and ICT Cotton, are facing charges of breaking international rules on child labor by sourcing cotton from Uzbekistan, which is well known for its use of child labor during the cotton harvest. The complaint, filed by the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, claims the organizations are linked to Uzbekistan through branches in the country's capital and partnerships with state-owned merchants.

More details emerged about the the first case of human trafficking to come to trial in Canada. This article provides more details about the conditions workers endured, who is being charged and the types of evidence the government has against the families involved.

Photo by Kay Chernush for the U.S. State Department.

Disabled woman was tortured and held as a sex slave

By Robert Patrick for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Friday, September 10th, 2010.

A Kirkwood man arrested by the FBI on Thursday was one of four Missouri men who paid a fifth to either watch him torture a mentally disabled woman online or torture her themselves, prosecutors said.

The 20-page federal indictment, unsealed with the men's arrests Thursday, contains accusations of sexual and physical torture lasting five years, acts that U.S. Attorney Beth Phillips called "among the most horrific ever prosecuted" in the Western District of Missouri.

The alleged torturer, Edward "Master Ed" Bagley Sr., 43, of Lebanon, Mo., tattooed the woman to mark her as his slave, convinced her that she was legally "bound" to him and threatened her, prosecutors said. He also is accused of forcing her to work as a stripper.

Bagley tortured the woman for five years, until he induced a heart attack while suffocating and electrically shocking her on Feb. 27, 2009, prosecutors said. She was hospitalized.

Her hospitalization sparked an 18-month investigation that led to the charges.

Those alleged to be customers for the woman's forced services included Bradley Cook, 31, of the 11500 block of Big Bend Road in Kirkwood; Dennis Henry, 50, of Wheatland, Mo.; Michael Stokes, 62, of Lebanon; and James Noel, 44, of Springfield, Mo., prosecutors said. Henry's occupation was listed as postmaster general of Nevada, Mo., but that could not immediately be confirmed Thursday evening. Cook, according to state records, is a licensed real estate broker associate.

The indictment alleges that Bagley met the woman when she was 16 and a runaway and persuaded her to move into his trailer with promises of a "great life" and a future as a model and dancer.

She got her own room, furniture and TV, and Bagley began giving her drugs, showing her pornography and sexually abusing her, prosecutors said.

When she turned 18, he persuaded her to sign a 'sex slave contract," which he said bound her to him for life, prosecutors claim.

Bagley "beat, whipped, flogged, suffocated, choked, electrocuted, caned, skewered, drowned, mutilated, hung and caged" the girl "to coerce her to become a 'sex slave,'" the indictment says. It adds that he tied her up and hung her in the air, locked her in a dog cage and used staples, nails and a sewing needle and thread during torture sessions too violent to describe.

For the full article click here.

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This story, which broke last week, is one of the most disturbing and horrific that I have heard. This case should remind us of the urgency of the issues Ashley Keller discussed in her analysis of the intersections of human trafficking and disability issues: "[USAID also reports] that the rate of child prostitutes with mild developmental disabilities is six times greater than what is expected within the general population. This marginalized group is underrepresented and does not have access to the tools they need to become empowered. . . As Human Rights Watch notes “disabled women and girls face the same spectrum of human rights abuses that non-disabled women face, but their social isolation and dependence magnifies these abuses and their consequences”. . . We, as moral, rational and reasoning beings, cannot allow these people to be swept under the rug and forgotten any longer."

Old Slavery v. Modern Day Slavery Part III

Part of the Human Trafficking Students' series on HTP

By Ashley Keller
Old Slavery v. Modern Day Slavery Part III (Conclusion)

Take Action
There are different national and international organizations for disabled persons. These organizations are made up of people with and without disabilities. While this is good news, sadly, this is new. Groups and organizations in the past have not thought to have disabled persons on their committees, which again leaves this population without a voice. These new integrated and accessible groups and organizations are using their insight to help implement accessible programs, or change existing programs in order to make them accessible. They are doing this by diversifying environments, i.e. taking a multicultural, multi-gender, multi-ability approach to problems and ideas.

There is also a greater urgency to educate and train the general public. This allows people to better understand and appreciate this population of people. It is very important for everyone to know that whether someone is disabled or not, they are all still people and they most definitely have value. They deserve the same human rights as those without disabilities. Unfortunately there is not much information out there on human trafficking and the disabled. Awareness is required in regards to human trafficking, but when this entire population is overlooked and left without a voice; people are not getting the whole story. This population needs to be brought up in conversations, classrooms, websites and statistics.

As Human Rights Watch notes “disabled women and girls face the same spectrum of human rights abuses that non-disabled women face, but their social isolation and dependence magnifies these abuses and their consequences”. This is a real problem and these people need our help as much as the men, women and children who are drug into this dark reality by force, fraud or coercion.

We need to give this population a voice, if possible, and if not, be the voice they so desperately need. The media can do this by reporting on this ugly truth through pictures, articles and documentaries. The media needs to make it known that this issue is alive and it is everywhere, not just in some far off country. While many countries have taken strides to criminalize human trafficking they continually fail to prosecute these perpetrators. Through research it was noted that most individuals detained in relation to human trafficking are released by the time a trial or sentencing arrives for “time served”.

There needs to be collaboration and cooperation between many different government and non-government agencies in order to bring light to this seemingly overlooked topic within the larger picture of modern slavery. Law Enforcement, families, cultures, hospitals, education agencies, and prosecutors all need to understand the ramifications of their beliefs and actions, or lack thereof. By working together, which is a feat in and of itself, fewer and fewer individuals will fall through the cracks.

As the great Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “to ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it”. We, as moral, rational and reasoning beings, cannot allow these people to be swept under the rug and forgotten any longer.

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Ashley received her B.A. in Psychology from Immaculata University this past semester. She has worked with individuals with autism for about 10 years and is currently working as an ABA therapist doing Early Intense Behavioral Intervention. This coming semester she will be student teaching to receive her Elementary/Special Education teaching certifications. She also plans to pursue graduate level programs in order to continue her work and understanding of individuals with autism.

Old Slavery v. Modern Day Slavery Part II

Part of the Human Trafficking Students' series on HTP

By Ashley Keller
Old Slavery v. Modern Day Slavery Part II

It is commendable that human trafficking is getting more and more attention and global awareness is on the rise. But, the small amount of information regarding this marginalized group is simply not enough, especially when there are statistics that report there are approximately 340 million women with disabilities (Amon, 2010)!

Even more stunning, not only is there a severe lack of information regarding human trafficking and disabilities worldwide, but there are entire United Nations and United States government reports, among others, that include hundreds of pages of statistics and personal accounts with no mention of this group of individuals. My nickname for them has become the forgotten people. That is precisely what they are, forgotten, omitted, passed over, left out.

It is incredible that with all the disability acts, services and initiatives, in the United States and around the world, that they have been so easily forgotten! The Bureau of Justice Statistics completed a National Crime Victimization Survey in 2007. This survey included nonfatal violent and property crimes against individuals with disabilities. Individuals with disabilities were victims of approximately “47,000 rapes, 79,000 robberies, 114,000 aggravated assaults, and 476,000 simple assaults”. It was also found that disabled persons had a “1.5 times higher rate for persons without disabilities” to be involved in a nonfatal violent incident. Not surprisingly, their survey also found that “females with a disability had a higher victimization rate than males with a disability”.

On the other hand, among typical individuals, males had a higher victimization rate than females. In Joseph Amon’s article entitled Invisible Women he states that “at least 10 percent of the world’s population is believed to live with a disability…half - 340 million - are women”. Sadly the voices of these women are not heard because they do not fit neatly into one group. They are women, but they are disabled, so they are not included in any women’s movements and even though they are disabled they are not necessarily included in any disability movements because they are women.

As previously discussed, the four major vulnerabilities of trafficking are poverty, ignorance, minority and being a female. According to Stop Violence Against Women, women make up 75% of the disabled population. This means that 75% of the disabled population has at least three out of the four major red flags that increase vulnerability to human trafficking. They are disabled which makes them a minority and often creates a lack of knowledge, and on top of that they are women. Because of the incorrect belief that sex with a virgin will cure HIV/AIDS, many women and children in this category are victimized.

This is due to another false belief that because these women are disabled, they are also virgins (stopvaw, 2009). UNICEF reports, that virtually 100% of disabled females in India are beaten, 25% are raped and 6% are forcibly sterilized. In South Africa battered women services are not accessible.

Children suffer a high rate of victimization in this population as well due to the fact that “impairments often make children appear as ‘easy victims’”. This is not only because they may have difficulty in defending themselves or in reporting the abuse, but also because their accounts are often dismissed (UNICEF, 2008). Children in general, and children with disabilities in particular, are thought to have unreliable testimonies of situations that occur, including those involving exploitation and abuse.

USAID reports on some facts that they received from UNICEF, and it has been reported that in Thailand prostitution houses seek deaf girls. Their thought process behind this is that not many people know sign language so these girls will not be able to communicate effectively in order to get help. This specific disability serves to isolate these individuals even more than a typically developing individual trafficked into an unknown country.

They also report that the rate of child prostitutes with mild developmental disabilities is six times greater than what is expected within the general population. This marginalized group is underrepresented and does not have access to the tools they need to become empowered. Unfortunately, even organizations that make attempts to help fall short of being accessible to this population worldwide.

Continued Tuesday September 14th, 2010.

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Ashley received her B.A. in Psychology from Immaculata University this past semester. She has worked with individuals with autism for about 10 years and is currently working as an ABA therapist doing Early Intense Behavioral Intervention. This coming semester she will be student teaching to receive her Elementary/Special Education teaching certifications. She also plans to pursue graduate level programs in order to continue her work and understanding of individuals with autism.

The Forgotten People of Modern Day Slavery Part I

Part of the Human Trafficking Students' Series on HTP

By Ashley Keller
Old Slavery v. Modern Day Slavery Part I

Enslavement of individuals predates our history. It has been around since the beginning of man. However, it was not until sometime in the 15th century that slavery focused on a certain group of people, the African Americans (Mintz 2007). When I speak of “old slavery” I am referring to the Transatlantic Slave Trade. There are some engrained similarities to old slavery when compared to modern. For instance, there is a loss of control and free will on the victim’s part, and it continues to be exploitation for profit. The enslaved are broken down to a sort of commodity to be traded, bought and sold. Their humanness is ripped away and replaced with a monetary value. However, modern day slavery, also known as human trafficking, is not the slavery from our history books. The old slavery was hyper focused on a specific group of people, African Americans, whereas modern day slavery “cuts across nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, age, class, education-level, and other demographic features” (National, 2010; Polaris 2009).

People are easier and cheaper to buy than ever before. It is estimated that the slaves of history were ten times more expensive then modern day slaves (Polaris 2009). The ease and cheapness of modern day slaves creates an issue of “disposability” because of the inexpensiveness of the “investment” (Bales, 2004). This “disposability” poses yet another threat to the countless, nameless, voiceless individuals caught in this hell.

Due to the fact that slaves are so cheap, there is much less motivation for the traffickers to take care of their “investments” because there are plenty more when needed. There are many reasons that individuals may be trafficked. Some of the reasons are: debt bondage, sexual exploitation, forced labor/service like domestic labor, agricultural labor, sweatshops, begging, hard labor, soldiers, hospitality industries and many more. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime reports that 161 countries have been identified as being affected by human trafficking (Trafficking in Persons: Global Patterns).

Human Trafficking and Disabilities

The International Labor Organization estimates that 2.4 million people were trafficked between 1995 and 2005. The 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report reports that 12.3 million adults and children were trafficked in 2009, at a rate of 1.8 people per 1,000 worldwide. In 2007, the Trafficking in Persons Report stated that 800,000 people are trafficked across borders every year, of which about 80% are women and girls and up to 50% are children. In the U.S. State Department’s “The Facts About Child Sex Tourism: 2005” it is reported that approximately 1 million children are sexually exploited every year throughout the world.

This statistic, as are most, if not all, is broken down into specifications of age and gender, but there is no specific information as to how many of these individuals have a disability. As defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act, a disability is; “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; a record of such an impairment; or a person regarded as having such an impairment”.

Human trafficking and disabilities is a severely under addressed topic in the discussion of human slavery. There are very few reports on its incidence. In 2009, Stop Violence Against Women wrote an article called “Violence Against Women with Disabilities”. They report that children in orphanages are at a higher risk for violence. Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery – Belgium reports that gangs throughout Belgium’s major cities organize begging rings using children and individuals with disabilities, typically from Romania (Patt, 2010). Due to the lack of understanding, financial means and cultural stigmas, discussed further below, children with disabilities are a source of shame to their families.

Research indicates that violence against children with disabilities occurs at least 1.7 times greater annually than for their peers without disabilities (disabledworld). There are many reasons as to why these families give up their children, such as not having the knowledge or financial resources to care for these children. Other reasons are extensions of cultural beliefs. UNICEF reports, “[s]ocial beliefs about disability include the fear that disability is associated with evil, witchcraft or infidelity, which serve to entrench the marginalisation of disabled people” (2008) . As a result, these children wind up in orphanages where they are much more susceptible to violence. Women and girls with disabilities are especially vulnerable to physical and sexual violence which puts them in danger of unplanned pregnancies due to sexual exploitation.

A child who requires assistance with washing, dressing and other intimate care activities may be particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse. Perpetrators can include caretakers, attendants, family members, peers or anyone who enjoys a position of trust and power (UNICEF, 2007).

People with disabilities are not seen as individuals who deserve dignity and respect. Even if a pregnancy occurs within a normal situation, not having to do with sexual exploitation, disabled women often do not have a choice in whether they can keep their children and abortions are forced upon them. Disabled women are also forcibly sterilized so that the issue of pregnancy will not become a recurring issue (UNICEF, 2007).

Not only are disabled children dumped off into the system and stripped of their inalienable human rights, but as they grow up they are blacklisted from employment. The factors that are thought to cause the most vulnerability for an individual to be trafficked are being impoverished, lack of knowledge or ignorance, others also discuss that being a female and a minority exacerbate the issues (UNIAP, 2007). However, the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking and the Strategic Information Response Network (SIREN) warn against over generalizing the vulnerabilities being dealt with by different cultures and areas. They suggest that it is naïve to enter an area assuming that the issue is the same as others. They argue that it is important to know the people, the culture and the problems before implementing a program in order to provide assistance.

Many groups go to help, but assume generalizations as fact and set up information programs and funding programs to fix the ignorant and impoverished in order to combat those specific vulnerabilities. However, those may not actually be the issue (UNIAP, 2007). In Cornell University’s 2007 Disability Status Report, they show that the employment gap between individuals with and without disabilities is 42.8%, in the United States alone (Baker, 2008). This enormous gap in employment exacerbates the vulnerability of poverty that these individuals experience by denying them access to a self-sustaining life with gainful employment.

Continued Monday, September 13th, 2010.

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Ashley received her B.A. in Psychology from Immaculata University this past semester. She has worked with individuals with autism for about 10 years and is currently working as an ABA therapist doing Early Intense Behavioral Intervention. This coming semester she will be student teaching to receive her Elementary/Special Education teaching certifications. She also plans to pursue graduate level programs in order to continue her work and understanding of individuals with autism.

Descent Into Slavery, and a Ladder to Another Life

From the New York Times:

He wore a satin suit onstage, so new that a tag was still fixed to the cuff. His 2-year-old daughter wiggled in his arms. The crowd cheered. Lifting his right hand to his lips, Jose Gutierrez seemed to blow a kiss to the audience. But it was more.

Mr. Gutierrez had gotten to the other side of slavery, climbing a ladder of second chances.

More than a decade ago, he was part of the nameless, unseen cast of a horror story. Lured from Mexico on promises of prosperity, he and 56 other people lived as prisoners in two row houses in Queens. By day, they sold key chains and miniature screwdriver kits in the subways, at airports, on roadsides. At night, they turned over every penny to the bosses of the houses.

All of the peddlers were deaf. Mr. Gutierrez, the youngest, had arrived in the United States at age 15, fluent only in Mexican Sign Language.

On Tuesday morning, 13 years after two of the deaf Mexican peddlers walked into a police station in Queens with a letter describing the conditions, Mr. Gutierrez was honored for his diligent work at a company that has cleaning contracts with federal agencies.

Mr. Gutierrez’s assignment: janitor at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

“I remembered playing with a car when I was a little boy, and seeing a picture of her,” he said. “When I found out that I was going to work there, it moved me. Thrilled me.”

There are, it turns out, second acts in American lives. Mr. Gutierrez leaves his home in Astoria shortly after 5 a.m., catches a ferry at 6:30, lands on the island 15 minutes later. He cleans bathrooms, empties trash, dusts a giant globe that shows the journeys of people to the United States.

His own odyssey began in 1995, when he heard from a friend about opportunities for deaf people in the United States. He was the seventh child in a family of eight, the only one who was deaf. “My friend’s father drove us to San Diego,” Mr. Gutierrez said. “I was very awkward. I didn’t know anything. We were supposed to go around and sell things. The money we collected we had to give to the boss.”

After a year in Los Angeles, he moved to a house in New York City that ran under the same terms, led by the Paoletti family, many of whom were also deaf. They would order a box of novelties, like miniature balls and bats, paying $75. The items would be attached to cards explaining that the seller was deaf. The peddlers would spend 12 to 16 hours a day in subway cars, dropping the trinkets in the laps of riders. Each box would bring in $485 in revenue. The bosses would swap bundles of single dollars at Atlantic City casinos for $100 bills, making the money easier to smuggle into Mexico, where it was banked.

Mr. Gutierrez depended entirely on the bosses for a bed and food. They took his money. “We were like slaves,” he said. “It was very frustrating. We couldn’t talk to the cops. It was heartbreaking.”

One day in July 1997, two of the peddlers went into the 115th Precinct station house in Queens, bringing a letter they had composed with help from a couple they had met at Newark Airport. “The police brought interpreters in to get the story told,” said Maria V. Pardo, a job counselor for the deaf with Fedcap Rehabilitation Services. The police found $35,000 in cash in one of the houses and 57 imprisoned peddlers. Federal prosecutors indicted 20 people on charges that included slavery and smuggling, and ultimately, they all pleaded guilty to some wrongdoing.

The peddlers, who were in the country illegally, were subject to deportation, but the administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani stepped in; the era of zero tolerance for illegal immigrants had not yet begun. They were put up in a motel by the city, and slowly found places to live, schools to attend, jobs to go to. “They were given special permission to work,” Ms. Pardo said. Nearly 40 people decided to stay in the United States.

Mr. Gutierrez, 17 at the time that the slavery ring was broken up, went to the Lexington School for the Deaf. “The support I got there was wonderful,” he said, and he also fell in love with another student, Christina Gonzalez, who was born in the United States. “I had no family here; her family has been so good to me.”

She pointed him to Fedcap, which provides training and employment for people with disabilities. In 2007, Fedcap sent him to work on Liberty and Ellis Islands under a janitorial services contract administered by AbilityOne, a federal program. He makes $20 an hour plus benefits, and now has a green card.

So on Tuesday, Mr. Gutierrez was brought back to receive a special honor at the Fedcap graduation ceremony.

With him onstage were Ms. Gonzalez and their daughter, Gloria. He lifted his fingers to his mouth, as if he were blowing a kiss. His audience knew better: it was a symbol from American Sign Language, repeated over and over.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”

What an absolutely fantastic story. This case, for all of its particular depravity for targeting people with disabilities, is one that was important for the creation and passage of the TVPA; we reference it often during trainings. It is hard to imagine in today's climate around immigration, what would have happened to the survivors in this case if there were no relief options for survivors. As the article mentions, the Mayor's office (and I'm sure other advocates) had to step in and prevent their deportation and luckily, that was more feasible at the time because "zero tolerance" had not yet begun.

I think the story is important as well, because when people are quick to assume that victims are weak individuals and that is why they are "so easily manipulated," we see the personal strength and determination in so many survivors who go on to achieve great things.