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Slavery in the United States
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Alaska
- Seven Russian women were brought to Alaska in order to dance nude at the Crazy Horse strip club. The traffickers used false visas and convinced the women that they would be performing traditional folk dances. Upon arriving, however, the women — two of whom were only sixteen at the time — were forced to dance naked. The traffickers confiscated all their possessions, their passports, and their plane tickets — as well as the tips they made while dancing, claiming that the money would be used to pay for expenses. The traffickers also threatened the women with violence and forced them to live in squalid conditions. Four people were arrested, three of whom pleaded guilty to visa fraud and bringing minors into the state. Charges of kidnapping, forced labor, and conspiracy were dropped.
Arkansas
- Five people were arrested and tried on charges that they smuggled two Chinese women into the US. Using fake visas and a sham marriage, the smugglers allegedly conspired to make the women sex slaves for Little Rock businessman David Jewell Jones. Unfortunately, one of the women, worried that she would be deported if Jones was acquitted, embellished her testimony on the stand and the trial ended with a hung jury. The accused, however, have been re-indicted on marriage fraud charges.
California
- In 1999 Supawan Veerapol was found guilty of charges, including one of involuntary servitude. Veerapol, a 55-year old Thai socialite and restauranteur, kept three Thai 'maids' in her house. These women were forced to work 18 hours a day, seven days a week; they were paid an insignificant wage. Veerapol watched their every move, even censoring their mail and threatening to harm their families in Thailand if they left Veerapol's house. The 'maids' were forced to crawl on their hands and knees while serving food at Veerapol's parties. They were also denied medical attention; one woman testified that she had to pull her own tooth with a pair of pliers. In January 2000 an unrepentant Veerapol was sentenced to just over eight years in federal prison.
- Law enforcement authorities made several arrests in San Francisco and several other California cities—including Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and Anaheim—in the summer of 2005 after an October raid in San Francisco uncovered 17 young Asian women working in a massage parlor in an alley way off Mission Street, just steps from some of the city’s biggest hotels; they were believed to have been trafficked into the country for sex and slave labor.
Colorado
- In August 2006, the Associated Press reported that Sarah Khonaizan, a 35 year-old woman living in Centennial, was sentenced to two months in jail for holding an Indonesian woman as a slave for four years. Khonaizan and her husband hid the woman's passport and forced her to care for their family. According to testimony, the woman was paid less than $2 a day and slept on a mattress on the basement floor. In June 2006, Khonaizan's husband was convicted of imprisoning and sexually abusing the 24 year-old woman. Khonaizan was charged with theft and ordered to pay $90,000 in restitution. A federal judge also sentenced her to five years' probation and ordered $26,275 in restitution for harboring an illegal immigrant.
- In February 2000 Michael Charles Smith, a 50-year old high school math teacher, was arrested on charges stemming from the accusation that he smuggled a number of undocumented Mexican boys into the United States in order to have sex with them. Further evidence claimed that Smith was part of a ring of pedophiles. Its members traveled to Acapulco to have sex with the city's street kids; they also trafficked in child pornography and smuggled Mexican teens across the border. Smith kept three such boys in his house, one for over a decade. Smith claimed the whole thing was a misunderstanding, pleaded guilty to a few lesser charges and was sentenced to just over two years in prison.
District of Columbia
- A number of slavery cases have been documented here in the nation's capital. Dora Mortey came from Ghana legally to work as a domestic servant for a World Bank official. Her employer, however, soon became known as 'The Creature.' Morety was forced to work 15 hours a day; she was told that if she left the house, she would be raped or kidnapped. Bangladeshi maid Shamela Begum claims she was enslaved and beaten by a UN official. And two Kenyan women have claim that they were imprisoned by a worker at the Kenyan embassy.
Florida
- In August 2006, Fernando Pascual, a 22 year-old man from Cape Coral, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for keeping a 13 year-old girl as his sex slave and housekeeper. The girl was brought to Cape Coral after being sold in Guatemala. Pascual's sister and brother-in-law were also given prison sentences for their roles in harboring the young girl.
- The Cadena family, from Veracruz, Mexico, smuggled at least 22 young women from Mexico to the United States and then forced them into prostitution. The women — some of them as young as 14 — were lured by promises of good-paying jobs. Instead, they found themselves as sex slaves in trailer park brothels in Florida and South Carolina. They were kept in deplorable conditions and regularly beaten. If a woman got pregnant, she was forced to have an abortion. The brothels' clients paid $20 for sex. For each transaction, $3 was subtracted from the $2000 to $3000 'smuggling fee' that these women ostensibly owed their captors. After a series of raids and arrests, family ringleader Rogerio Cadena pleaded guilty to a number of charges. He faces up to 15 years in prison.
- In October 2003, authorities uncovered a case of slavery in Cape Coral, Florida involving a twelve year-old Guatemalan girl who was sold by her parents and smuggled into the U.S, where she cooked, cleaned, and worked as a sex slave. The girl was repeatedly raped and beaten so badly that she lost her first child due. Her story was reported at the hospital while she was pregnant with her second child. She took refuge in a neighbor’s house, but her report was ignored for a year and a half.
- In March 2005 the Coalition of Immokalee Workers pressured Yum!, a company selling agricultural goods to businesses such as Taco Bell to increase worker’ wages. Workers were given 40 cents per 32 pound bucket of tomatoes. These wages are the same as they were 30 years ago. Many workers were incarcerated, and beaten. The CIW was able to free 1,000 workers by forcing an increase in wages and rewriting the terms of slavery in Yum!’s supplier code of conduct.
Georgia
- Smugglers lured up to 1,000 young women — some as young as 13 — from Southeast Asia to Atlanta, with the promise of good-paying factory jobs. Instead, the women were forced to pay off their enormous 'travel expenses' by working as prostitutes. The women lived in heavily guarded compounds, which ensured that the women would not leave the brothel. The razor wire and high walls also hid the squalor in which the women were forced to live. The prostitution ring was finally busted in 1999.
Hawaii
- In 2004, a man in Waipahu, Hawaii was accused of smuggling seven men from Tonga, a small island in the Pacific, to Hawaii. The men, who were forced to work for his landscaping business, lived in shack on a pig farm. The man argued they had come voluntarily with hopes of bettering their lives and sending money back to poverty-stricken families. Yet the victims received pay only occasionally and were frequently beaten. A jury found the man guilty of 34 counts—including involuntary servitude, forced labor, alien harboring, alien smuggling, and unlawful use of documents.
Illinois
- In 1995 Alexander Mishulovich lured five women from Latvia with the promise of high-paying jobs. Upon arriving in Chicago, they were instead forced to dance in a topless bar. Virtually all of the proceeds they made were kept by Mishulovich. The women were forced to live in a single bedroom apartment; they were beaten and sexually abused. In 1998 the FBI arrested four of his henchmen, but Mishulovich remains a fugitive. Recently, Chicago police have looked into a similar scheme involving a number of women who were smuggled from China into the city and then forced to work off their $60, 000 'travel fee' as prostitutes.
Massachusetts
- For four long months in 1992, Vasantha Gedara was kept as a slave just a few subway stops from downtown Boston. Gedara left her native Sri Lanka because she was promised a decent-paying domestic job in the US. Her captors — 30-year old graduate student Talal Alzanki and his wife Abair — picked her up at the airport, immediately confiscated her passport, and took her to their apartment. She was forced to constantly clean the apartment, working 13-15 hours a day. Gedara had to sleep in a hallway and she was fed only bread and water; she was even banned from sitting on the apartment's furniture. The Alzankis beat Gedara, and told her that she would be shot if she left the house. Gedara was eventually rescued by a nurse who was tending for the Alzankis' child. Soon thereafter, the Alzankis were arrested. Talil's defense — that he was under a great deal of stress and that Gedara was lying — fell on deaf ears. The jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to a year in prison.
Maryland
- Rene and Margarida Bonetti kept Hilda Dos Santos, a 65-year old illiterate Brazilian woman, as an unpaid housekeeper for 15 years. She was not only denied a wage, but also medical treatment and even food — Rene kept a lock on the house refrigerator. Dos Santos was regularly beaten; Margarida once poured scalding soup on her. She was saved from her fate only after neighbors took Dos Santos to the hospital for treatment a stomach tumor that had grown to the size of a soccer ball. Rene was arrested, but Margarida has apparently fled to Brazil. Despite a brazen defense, in which he claimed that Dos Santos was a costly and horrible housekeeper, Bonetti was convicted in August 2000. He was sentenced to 6½ years of prison and forced to pay Dos Santos over $100,000.
- In Silver Spring, Maryland, a Cameroonian woman was exposed for keeping an 11 year-old Cameroonian girl as her domestic slave. The young girl was forced to cook, clean, and care for the woman’s children. She was also frequently beaten with various items, including a high-heeled shoe and a broomstick. Though the woman’s attorney argued using domestic servants like this is accepted in Cameroon, she was sentenced to over 17 years in prison.
Michigan
- Joseph and Evelyn Djoumessi invited a young girl from their native Cameroon to live in their Michigan home. She was promised a better life in America, an opportunity to get a good education. Instead, the Djoumessis forged adoption papers in order to hide the girl's real status — she was not a boarder or an exchange student, but a slave. She was forced to clean the house and look after the Djoumessis' three children; she was rarely allowed to leave the house. She was beaten several times and repeatedly raped by Joseph. The girl was eventually rescued by a neighbor and the Djoumessis were arrested.
- Two men were discovered smuggling women from the Ukraine outside Detroit in February 2005. The women had been promised jobs as waitresses. Instead, they were locked in the basement of a home the men rented in the neighborhood of Livonia, beaten, raped and forced to work at a near by strip club. The women worked 12 hours a day, 6 days a week and received none of the money they made. The men claimed the women were simply working off the thousands of dollars they owed them for visas and work papers.
Minnesota
- In September 2000, five people were indicted for running an extensive smuggling and prostitution ring. The group smuggled women from Asia into the US, and then forced them to work off their smuggling fee as prostitutes. These arrests — which involved the execution of thirteen search warrants in three states — were the culmination of 'Operation Jade Blade,' a two-year federal investigation of this problem.
New Hampshire
- Andrew and David were offered high paying jobs for Bradley Tree Company in New Hampshire, but when they arrived from Jamaica, their passports were confiscated. In Linchfield, New Hampshire they were repeated threatened and beaten, forced to live in a shed, given very little money, yet required to pay $50 per week for rent. Their “employers” are currently serving five years in a federal prison. Over 200 other cases of slavery are said to have been reported in New England in the past four years.
New Jersey
- Noris Elvira and Ana Luz Rosales-Martinez admitted to illegally smuggling dozens of Honduran women, some as young as 14, into the United States. The women were forced to work in bars to pay back smuggling fees — some debts were as high as $20,000. By dancing and drinking with male patrons at bars in Union City and Guttenberg, the women earned $5 an hour plus tips to pay back the smuggling debt. Prostitution was encouraged, and the women were beaten if they were disobedient. One woman was forced to ingest abortion pills after the traffickers found out she was pregnant.
- In search of more money for herself and her family, Marjina left her child and traveled half the earth: from her native Bangladesh, to Dubai to work in a factory, and then on to New Jersey to work as a housekeeper. But there she only found misery and pain — soon after arriving in the US, Marjina realized that she was a domestic slave. Her masters forced her to work 18-20 hours a day, seven days a week; she was forced to shovel snow while wearing sandals. She was denied medical treatment and telephone calls home. Marjina was told that if she left the house, she would be arrested. She managed to escape, but eventually found herself working for an equally brutal family. Fortunately, Marjina also escaped from that house, thanks to a kindly busdriver. She is suing the two families for back wages; they deny all the accusations.
- In Hudson County, New Jersey in 2005, federal agents discovered a group of girls and women from Honduras who were kept in crowded apartments and forced to dance, drink alcohol, and have sex with male customers at local bars to pay back thousands of dollars in human smuggling fees. The young, undocumented women—some as young as fourteen—were from poor, rural villages in Honduras and had been promised legitimate jobs as waitresses in restaurants in New Jersey. Instead, they were raped, forced to take abortion-inducing pills, and repeatedly subjected to physical abuse and threats of deportation or harm to their families in Honduras if they did not comply with their smuggler’s demands. They were paid approximately $240 for 48 hours of work a week but were required to pay back nearly all of it to the ring for their astronomical smuggling fees. Federal Agents finally indicted 10 people, all alleged members of a ring operating in the US and Honduras.
- Four girls between 14 and 18 years-old were promised marriage and happiness in America. Instead, they found themselves forced into prostitution in brothels in Plainfield, New Jersey. The girls each came from poverty and minimal education and were easily lured by opportunity in the U.S. Local and federal authorities eventually found the women and broke up the sex ring in March of 2002.
New Mexico
- In September 2000, five people were indicted for running an extensive smuggling and prostitution ring. The group smuggled women from Asia into the US, and then forced them to work off their smuggling fee as prostitutes. These arrest — which involved the execution of thirteen search warrants in three states — were the culmination of 'Operation Jade Blade,' a two-year federal investigation of this problem.
New York
- Beatrice, a girl of thirteen, was recruited from Nigeria to live with an American family, to help with the housework, and to attend school. Upon her arrival in to the U.S., however, Beatrice found herself enslaved: locked in a suburban home, working for up to twenty hours a day, and denied education. Her masters — Prosper and Ifeoma Udogwu — regularly beat her while forcing her to hold her hands above her head. In 1998, after being beaten for over an hour, Beatrice screamed so loudly that neighbors called the police and she was finally discovered.
- Between 1993 and 1996, the Paoletti family, headed by Adriana Paoletti Lemus, smuggled 100 deaf-mute Mexicans to New York City, where they were forced to sell trinkets on New York's streets and subways. The workers handed people keychains with tags reading "$1. I am deaf." The Paoletti family, most of whom were also deaf, made over $1 million from the operation. The workers were housed in Queens, 10 people sharing a room. Those who did not meet the $600-a-week quota and those who tried to escape were shocked with a stun gun. The operation was discovered after several of the workers reported their situation to the police. Lemus and 19 others were charged. Lemus eventually pled guilty and was sentenced to 14 years in prison and ordered to pay $1 million to her victims.
- Three men plead guilty to charges of operating a human trafficking ring in New York City. The men admitted to having smuggled poverty-stricken women and girls from Mexico and forcing them into prostitution since 1991. The girls were physically abused and received none of their payment; instead, the $25 to $35 they received from customers was split among the three men and prostitution ringleaders. Authorities began pursuing the case in 2003, but the men did not plead guilty until April of 2005.
North Carolina
- Charlotte, N.C. — The Charlotte Observer reported that in 2004 police shut down two brothels located in houses in northeast Charlotte, North Carolina. The brothels held young immigrant women from Latin America as sex slaves, giving them only half of what they earned from dozens of men each night. They were locked in rooms during the day, and fear of being beaten prevented them from running away. Because most of these women were illegal immigrants, they were reluctant to report the crimes to authorities. Police reported many of these women were traded between pimps from near by cities such as Raleigh and Greensboro for as little as $130 each. Often these woman were too scared and confused by the constant movement to know what city they were currently in. Francisco Romero Pina, who operated the brothels in Charlotte, was arrested on charges related to weapons and fraud, but not for human trafficking because the women were too frightened to testify against him. Click here to read the article.
South Carolina
- The Cadena family, from Veracruz, Mexico, smuggled at least 22 young women from Mexico to the United States and then forced them into prostitution. The women — some of them as young as 14 — were lured by promises of good-paying jobs. Instead, they found themselves as sex slaves in trailer park brothels in Florida and South Carolina. They were kept in deplorable conditions and regularly beaten. If a woman got pregnant, she was forced to have an abortion. The brothels' clients paid $20 for sex. For each transaction, $3 was subtracted from the $2000 to $3000 'smuggling fee' that these women ostensibly owed their captors. After a series of raids and arrests, family ringleader Rogerio Cadena pleaded guilty to a number of charges. He faces up to 15 years in prison.
Texas
- In the summer of 2000, federal agents charged seven people with smuggling women into the US and forcing them into prostitution. The young women, from Thailand and China, were taken to Houston and required to pay off a $40,000 'transportation fee.' The women were not allowed to write home or use the phone; they essentially lived in the brothel. Five people pleaded guilty to a number of charges.
- In 2005 a couple in Mission, Texas was charged with bringing two undocumented immigrant women across the border from Mexico with the promise of a good job. Instead, they were used as slaves at the daycare the couple runs and at the couple’s home. The victims were forced to work 1,300 hours with no pay and were constantly threatened and harassed. The couple was charged with human trafficking.
Virginia
- Two Indonesian men living in northern Virginia plead guilty to plotting to traffic Indonesian women and girls into the U.S. The men admitted to planning to smuggle women and girls, ages 15 to 23, and force them to work as prostitutes and nude dancers. They were sentenced in July 2005 to counts of sex trafficking, immigration fraud, ID document fraud and money laundering.
Washington
- In Lynnwood, the FBI accused a Washington couple of using a Kenyan woman as a modern-day slave. The couple allegedly locked the woman in their home, forced her to work 15 hours a day, and paid her between $70 and $180 a month, instead of the $500 she was promised. The story was reported by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 2005.
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