A Woman. A Prostitute. A Slave

Originally published November 27, 2010 by Nicholas D. Kristof in the New York Times

Americans tend to associate “modern slavery” with illiterate girls in India or Cambodia. Yet there I was the other day, interviewing a college graduate who says she spent three years terrorized by pimps in a brothel in Midtown Manhattan.

Those who think that commercial sex in this country is invariably voluntary — and especially men who pay for sex — should listen to her story. The men buying her services all mistakenly assumed that she was working of her own volition, she says.

Yumi Li (a nickname) grew up in a Korean area of northeastern China. After university, she became an accountant, but, restless and ambitious, she yearned to go abroad.

So she accepted an offer from a female jobs agent to be smuggled to New York and take up a job using her accounting skills and paying $5,000 a month. Yumi’s relatives had to sign documents pledging their homes as collateral if she did not pay back the $50,000 smugglers’ fee from her earnings.

Yumi set off for America with a fake South Korean passport. On arrival in New York, however, Yumi was ordered to work in a brothel.

“When they first mentioned prostitution, I thought I would go crazy,” Yumi told me. “I was thinking, ‘how can this happen to someone like me who is college-educated?’ ” Her voice trailed off, and she added: “I wanted to die.”

She says that the four men who ran the smuggling operation — all Chinese or South Koreans — took her into their office on 36th Street in Midtown Manhattan. They beat her with their fists (but did not hit her in the face, for that might damage her commercial value), gang-raped her and videotaped her naked in humiliating poses. For extra intimidation, they held a gun to her head.

If she continued to resist working as a prostitute, she says they told her, the video would be sent to her relatives and acquaintances back home. Relatives would be told that Yumi was a prostitute, and several of them would lose their homes as well.

Yumi caved. For the next three years, she says, she was one of about 20 Asian prostitutes working out of the office on 36th Street. Some of them worked voluntarily, she says, but others were forced and received no share in the money.

Yumi played her role robotically. On one occasion, Yumi was arrested for prostitution, and she says the police asked her if she had been trafficked.

“I said no,” she recalled. “I was really afraid that if I hinted that I was a victim, the gang would send the video to my family." . . .

No one has a clear idea of the scale of the problem, and estimates vary hugely. Some think the problem is getting worse; others believe that Internet services reduce the role of pimps and lead to commercial sex that is more consensual. What is clear is that forced prostitution should be a national scandal. Just this month, authorities indicted 29 people, mostly people of Somali origin from the Minneapolis area, on charges of running a human trafficking ring that allegedly sold many girls into prostitution — one at the age of 12.

There are no silver bullets, but the critical step is for the police and prosecutors to focus more on customers (to reduce demand) and, above all, on pimps. Prostitutes tend to be arrested because they are easy to catch, while pimping is a far harder crime to prosecute. That’s one reason thugs become pimps: It’s hugely profitable and carries less risk than selling drugs or stealing cars. But that can change as state and federal authorities target traffickers rather than their victims. . .

Read the full article here.

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Nicholas Kristof rightly points out the common misconception that human trafficking occurs only outside the U.S. borders. Awareness of the global nature of human trafficking merits great emphasis in the fight for abolition. The stories told by countless survivors demonstrates the strength of the human spirit and creates new impetus for addressing the demand side of this profitable trade.

Somalis in Twin Cities Shaken by Sex-Trafficking Charges

From The New York Times on 23 November:

By Erik Eckholm

When the girl now identified as Jane Doe 2 came under their control in 2006 at age 12, the Somali Outlaws and the Somali Mafia gangs set a firm rule: Their members could have sex with her for nothing; others had to pay with money or drugs.

Repeatedly over the next three years, in apartments, motel rooms and shopping center bathrooms in Minnesota and Tennessee, the girl performed sexual acts for gang members and paying customers in succession, according to a federal indictment that charged 29 Somalis and Somali-Americans with drawing young girls into prostitution over the last decade, using abuse and threats to keep them in line, and other crimes. The suspects, now aged 19 to 38, sported nicknames like Hollywood, Cash Money and Forehead, prosecutors said.

The allegations of organized trafficking, unsealed this month, were a deep shock for tens of thousands of Somalis in the Minneapolis area, who fled civil war and famine to build new lives in the United States and now wonder how some of their youths could have strayed so far. Last week, in quiet murmurings over tea and in an emergency public meeting, parents and elders expressed bewilderment and sometimes outrage- anger with the authorities for not acting sooner to stop the criminals, and with themselves for not saving their youth.

For the rest of the article visit The New York Times.

Freedom Boutique for Slavery Victims

How's this for a great idea?

From Rochester's Post-Bulletin:

By Matthew Stolle
The Post-Bulletin, Rochester MN

There are lots of stories in the news these days that chronicle the injustices and miseries of people in far-flung places of the world. They make interesting conversational topics, but rarely do people feel as if they are in a position to do anything about it.

Patti Brown feels differently.

The Rochester hairstylist plans to set up a Freedom Boutique at the Cutting Loose Hair Salon in Rochester later this month. The boutique will offer products either made by or benefiting people who have come out of human trafficking, slavery and abuse.

"I kind of felt after reading about the slavery issue and the human traffic problem, it's like, 'What can I do?'" Brown said. "I do think it's helping. We can end slavery by the way we purchase."

Brown said the problem of modern-day slavery afflicts 27 million women and children, and the problem is not confined to places outside of the United States. Minnesota is among the 13 most heavily sex and slavery trafficked states in the nation, according to the Minnesota Human Trafficking Watch.

Approximately 50 percent of all victims of trafficking are children.

Brown said the products she will be selling have been made by women in India and Cambodia who have escaped from forced prostitution. Others have been made by women in Swaziland and Uganda who are suffering with AIDS because of the abuse against them.

"(It's) helping people get on their feet," Brown said. "I guess it's that after-care side that really spoke to me and made me think (that) if we're going to try and help them get out of this situation, we have to help them have an income."

Coffee, chocolate, jewelry and handbags will be sold at the boutique. The products, in a sense, have already been paid for. Brown and her husband purchased the products, and the person who made them has been paid as well. The boutique is a way of keeping that virtuous cycle of purchasing alive.

"It may not sound like much, but sometimes it is the most we can do, and it not only spreads awareness, but also helps people realize we can do something to stop slavery through our purchases."

For more details, click here.

U.S. Teens Take a Stand Against Trafficking

From the Daily Planet:

By Martha Vickery
July 17th, 2008

MINNESOTA, USA- Two Woodbury High School students have taken on a project to organize both an educational conference for teens about human trafficking and a benefit concert for Twin Cities area organizations that help victims of the crime.

The project, dubbed End Slavery Now, is the creation of sisters Joan Park (15) and Grace Park (17), and now includes a planning group of about 24 teen girls who will hold an educational conference July 25 and 26, with an expected attendance of 50 to 60.

The participants in the conference will also be invited to participate in a fundraiser concert to benefit the organizations that work with victims.

Human trafficking is real in Minnesota, according to Yae Joon Kwon, an advocate for the anti-human trafficking program administered by the Korean Service Center in Minneapolis. Kwon has been raising awareness among youth, in community groups and in law enforcement in educating about this emerging crime since she took the job in January.

Minnesota has been named as one of the 13 states in which human trafficking incidents are the highest. The existence of an international border, and a large rural area, contribute to human trafficking here, according to information on the website of Civil Society, a local legal advocacy group that works directly with human trafficking victims.

The highest-profile law enforcement action on human trafficking in the recent past took place in December 2007, Kwon said “where there were 100 women, all of Chinese and Korean descent, all in uptown and the St. Louis Park area. The women slept in massage parlors and were not allowed to leave. Their visas and passports taken away. They were under video surveillance. They did not speak English – their clients were upper-middle-class men between age 35 and 55.”

Internationally-trafficked victims are often kept under control through “debt bondage,” Kwon said, where the captors tell the victims they have to work off their debts of flight tickets, visa fees, or other costs incurred by the trafficker to bring them to the U.S. The captors may tell the victims their family will be told and/or that children or other family members will be hurt if the victims do not cooperate. “They feel like they have no other options,” she said. “Oftentimes, they are physically abused or raped. They are in an environment where they are under threat.”

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