Sex slavery: Living the American nightmare

Shadowy multibillion-dollar industry far more widespread than expected
By Alex Johnson and Cesar Rodriguez
MSNBC
December 22, 2008

When FBI and immigration agents arrested a 28-year-old Guatemalan woman three months ago in Los Angeles, they announced that they had shut down one of the most elaborate sex trafficking rings in the country. It was also the family business.

The woman, Maribel Rodriguez Vasquez, was the sixth member of her family to be rounded up in the two-year multi-agency investigation. Vasquez, five of her relatives and three other Guatemalan nationals were charged with 50 counts, alleging that they lured at least a dozen young women — including five minors as young as 13 years old — to the United States with promises of good jobs, only to put them to work as prostitutes. All remain in custody as investigators attempt to unravel the complex case.

Vasquez — quickly dubbed the “L.A. Madam” — attracted attention because she had been featured on the fugitive-hunting television program “America’s Most Wanted.” But it was one of only a few such cases to be spotlighted by national media, contributing to the false impression that cases of immigrant sex trafficking are isolated incidents, law enforcement officials and advocates for immigrants say.

The reality is that human trafficking goes on in nearly every American city and town, said Lisette Arsuaga, director of development for the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking, a human rights organization in Los Angeles.

“Human trafficking is well hidden,” Arsuaga said. “I consider it a huge problem.”

Her assessment is shared by authorities in Bexar County, Texas, where the Sheriff’s Office has formed a task force with Shared Hope International, an anti-slavery organization founded by former Rep. Linda Smith, D-Wash. Bexar County is considered a crossroads of the cross-border Mexican sex slave trade because two Interstate highways that crisscross the state intersect there, some 150 miles from the Mexican border.

“I could go to a truck stop in South Texas right now and get on a CB radio and ask for some sweet stuff, and someone’s going to come out and offer something to sell,” Sheriff’s Deputy Chris Burchell said.

A $9.5 billion-a-year industry
Federal officials agree that the trafficking of human beings as sex slaves is far more prevalent than is popularly understood. While saying it is difficult to pinpoint the scope of the industry, given its shadowy nature, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials estimated that it likely generates more than $9.5 billion a year.

Last year alone, the FBI opened more than 225 human trafficking investigations in the United States. Figures for 2008 are not yet available, but in a coordinated nationwide sweep in July, federal, state and local authorities made more than 640 arrests and rescued 47 children in just three days.

In congressional testimony this year, FBI Director Robert Mueller called sex trafficking “a significant and persistent problem in the U.S. and around the world.”

Most cases involve “international persons trafficked to the United States from other countries,” who are generally less aware of their rights, probably do not speak English and are frightened to go to the authorities, he said. “Victims are often lured with false promises of good jobs and better lives and are then forced to work in the sex industry.”

While an increasing number of young men and boys are being forced into the commercial sex industry, more than 80 percent of victims are women and girls, the State Department estimated this year. Of those, 70 percent are forced into prostitution, stripping, pornography or mail-order marriage.

That allegedly was the case with the L.A. Madam.

Prosecutors said in court documents that the Vasquez ring sold Guatemalan women and girls to one another like slaves for several years. Ring members also would try to keep them in line by taking them to witch doctors who threatened to put curses on them and their families if they ran away, the prosecution said.

In one incident, three of the defendants repeatedly kicked and hit one of the victims to punish her for trying to escape, the documents allege.

“These young women were enticed into coming to this country by promises of the American dream, only to arrive and discover that what awaited was a nightmare,” said Robert Schoch, an ICE special agent.

A modern-day form of slavery
Less publicized cases reveal ordeals just as horrific.

In August, three owners and operators of Asian massage parlors in Johnson County, Kansas, near Kansas City, pleaded guilty to human trafficking of women they recruited from China and forced into prostitution.

Charging documents said the defendants, all Chinese nationals, arranged the women’s travel, meeting them at the Kansas City, Mo., airport and driving them directly to one of two massage parlors they operated in Overland Park. There, the women were forced to work from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week performing “sexual services on male patrons in exchange for money.”

Occasionally, one of the women would be sent to a nearby apartment to provide “extended sexual services,” prosecutors said. Otherwise, they lived in the massage parlors, monitored 24 hours a day by surveillance cameras.

The case made it clear that “human trafficking is a modern-day form of slavery that reaches from the other side of the globe to the suburban Midwest,” U.S. Attorney John F. Wood said.

Last month, police in Nashville, Tenn., arrested two men and charged them with holding a young Mexican woman as a sex slave, driving her across Tennessee, Georgia and Florida, where she was forced to engage in prostitution with as many as seven men a day, court records said.

Investigators alleged that the woman, 22, was tortured, stabbed and cut with an ice pick to ensure her obedience. They said the men also threatened to kill her family in Mexico and her sister in Atlanta if she did not follow their orders.

“The account given by this woman is very, very disturbing,” said Don Aaron, a spokesman for the Nashville police.

Beatings, rapes and forced abortions
In New York, meanwhile, Consuelo Carreto Valencia, a 4-foot-10, 61-year-old grandmother, pleaded guilty in July to smuggling dozens of women from Mexico and violently coercing them to perform sex acts.

Prosecutors said that Valencia was the matriarch of an extensive prostitution ring based in Mexico. The victims were compelled to perform sex acts 12 hours a day and were subjected to beatings, rape and forced abortions, they said.

Valencia agreed to the guilty plea after her attorney, John S. Wallenstein, told her she could go to prison for life if she were convicted on all counts.

“I said the jurors are going to want to jump out of the jury box and tear you to pieces,” Wallenstein was quoted as saying.

Cases hard to build
But law enforcement officials say that such successes are relatively rare. Often, victims are too frightened to cooperate with investigators, and when they are willing to help, they often speak little or no English, making it problematic to present cases that commonly rest on one person’s word against that of another.

“We have cases come up all the time, but no one really knows about it because Hispanic illegal immigrants fear being deported,” said Sara Sherman, an anti-slavery activist with Free For Life Ministries in Nashville.

Sheriff’s Deputy Keith Bickford, coordinator of the Human Trafficking Task Force in Multnomah County, Ore., said “The girls need help,” but he said they are “so difficult to deal with that we don’t have anyone trained to deal with them.”

Catching ringleaders in the act is particularly difficult, said Minneapolis Deputy Police Chief Valerie Wurster.

“We don’t find people who are chained to beds,” Wurster said. “What we’re finding is people who are very frightened, who don’t have resources locally, being managed by someone who is telling them things that aren’t very true about the environment that they’re living in.”

Federal authorities said that because the victims of sex slavery are captive and cannot come forward, they need more help from the public.

The Justice Department maintains a human trafficking hotline at 1-888-428-7581, but there is a great deal of work left to do, said Carmen Pitre, executive director of the Task Force on Family Violence, an agency that supports victims of trafficking in Milwaukee.

“We’ve come to learn that cases of trafficking are all around us in plain sight,” Pitre said. “Today, you can buy a human being for $200 in any major city in the world.”

Gordon College students prepare gift boxes for local families

By Sarah Durfey
Gordon College Graduate
December 2008

Near the end of this fall semester students at Gordon College wanted to do something for the many women and girls who have been abused, enslaved, or are suffering injustice – especially those who are right here in Boston. We had recently formed a group on campus called the Gordon College Abolitionist Movement, responding to the issue of modern slavery, recognizing the need to act – and raise our voices in our communities and in the government.

We had heard of a student group at another school putting together Christmas boxes for women in a safe house in Cambodia. We decided it would be awesome to make boxes for women right here in Boston.

Through the abolitionist movement we sent out emails and put up flyers around campus, spreading the word that we were collecting donations to bring a bit of Christmas to these woman who have been through such darkness.

Donations started flowing in, and right before finals we had a “boxing party” and organized everything into gift boxes. It was exciting to see the generosity of students (and their parents) as we were able to make over 20 boxes!

There is much to be done, but it is encouraging to know there are people ready and willing to step up and take action.

Listen to the show Laws do little to curtail sex slavery

Interview by Kai Ryssdal
American Public Media

Kai Ryssdal: Modern day slavery is a topic that's not easy to discuss. But it's too important and too big to avoid.

By some estimates, slavery as an industry is worth about $91 billion a year. Sex slaves represent about 4 percent of all slaves around the world. But they account for about 40 percent of the profits. And as the global economy worsens so could the lives of those women and children. Siddarth Kara's book about them -- and the business -- is called "Sex Trafficking."

Welcome to the program.

Siddharth Kara: Thanks. It's good to be here.

Ryssdal: As a purely business model question, slavery is all up-side? I mean, it sounds flip, but really it's almost hard to lose money doing it.

Kara: That is a very good point. The fundamental economics of slavery is to maximize profit by minimizing the cost of labor, in this case, zero or close to zero. So, yes, there is a tremendous profit incentive. There should be more risk to the commission of these crimes. Slavery is illegal in just about every country in the world. But, there is almost no real risk to the exploitation of slaves around the world.

Ryssdal: Why is that? I mean, if it's illegal, if governments know about it, which they all do because we're talking about it -- and everybody talks about it from time to time -- why is this the case?

Kara: Weak laws. In India, for example, there is actually no financial penalty for exploiting a sex slave, but there is a $44 fine for owning a brothel. Now you can actually make, as a brothel owner, close to $13,000 a year per slave in profit. So, even if you rounded up every exploiter of sex slaves each and every year and fine them that $44, sex slavery would still be a high-profit enterprise to be in.

Ryssdal: As you think about how to eradicate sex slavery -- and that's a good part of the book -- you talk about the supply side and the demand side. But with access to sex slaves so cheap and human biology being what it is, can you ever really eradicate the demand side?

Kara: I do believe that the most effective attack on the sex slave industry in the near-term, is an attack on the demand force. To eradicate slavery in the long-term you'll have to address the supply side -- issues relating to poverty, lawlessness, corruption, etc. But I, in the book, focus on what I call two strategic points of intervention in the fundamental business structure of sex slavery and that's slave owner demand for profit and consumer demand for low-priced commercial sex. And if you can significantly increase the risk inherent to the system -- increase the cost of committing these crimes -- you can make a strong negative impact on both slave owner and consumer demand.

Ryssdal: This is obviously an incredibly emotional topic. How do you remain so analytical about this, because you clearly do?

Kara: I -- it's not easy. As I sit here and talk with you about this business analysis -- I have a business and legal background -- my mind is still filled with the faces of so many of the slaves I met: Hundreds of slaves who have suffered unspeakable acts of savagery. Women and children who are raped, tortured and killed every day. And I believe that a business and economic analysis is the best way to attack a fundamentally economic crime, slavery. But the moral outrage of these crimes and the human cost of these crimes, is going to be what motivates us to initiate more effective efforts to redress these crimes.

Ryssdal: Are you optimistic that anything is going to come of what you clearly hope to achieve from this book?

Kara: I go through waves of emotion. There are some real down days and there were some down days on the research trail. For me this book is step one. Step two is to get in front of the right audiences, governments, international organizations, and argue for the case I'm making for a new brand of global abolitionist movement that will design and deploy more effective tactics to abolish slavery once and for all.

Ryssdal: The book by Siddharth Kara is called "Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery." He sits on the board of directors of the group Free the Slaves. Siddharth, thanks a lot for coming in.

Kara: Thank you.

ACLU Claims Catholic Bishops Misusing Grant Money

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 12, 2009

BOSTON (AP) -- A federal lawsuit filed Monday claims Roman Catholic bishops are wrongly imposing their religious beliefs on victims of human trafficking by prohibiting grant money to be used for emergency contraception, condoms and abortion care.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the complaint in federal court in Boston against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The suit claims the agency, which distributes money to help trafficking victims, has allowed the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to limit the services its subcontractors provide. The ACLU claims the bishops' conference is misusing taxpayer money and attempting to impose its religious beliefs on trafficking victims.

The federal government estimates that between 14,500 and 17,500 people -- mostly women -- are brought into the United States each year and exploited for labor, often prostitution. Through the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a law passed by Congress in 2000, the federal government distributes money to cover services needed by victims of severe forms of trafficking.

''The whole goal of this program is to provide the full range of services, and the concern is that because of a main contractor's religious beliefs, it will be much more difficult for women to get these services,'' said Brigitte Amiri, a staff attorney with the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project.

A spokesman for HHS did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

The bishops' conference, which promotes Catholic activities and does charitable and social welfare work, began administering the funds under the trafficking law in 2006, using social service organizations as subcontractors to provide the services. In its lawsuit, the ACLU said the agreements between the conference and the subcontractors explicitly prohibit them from using the funds to provide ''referral for abortion services or contraceptive materials.''

''We will continue to provide those services in the contract that are consistent with our belief in the life and dignity of the human person,'' said Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the bishops' conference, which was not named as a defendant in the complaint.

In its lawsuit, the ACLU said the bishops' conference has received a total of $6 million since 2006 under the program. Some of the services provided include food stamps, torture treatment and career counseling.

The Bush administration, backed by evangelicals, made the battle against sex slavery a high priority, appointing former Republican U.S. Rep. John R. Miller as an ambassador on slavery for the State Department and leader of its Office to Monitor and Combat Human Trafficking.

Carol Gomez, the founding director of MataHari, a Boston-based non-profit that provides services to trafficking victims but does not contract with the bishops' conference, said victims often experience physical and emotional trauma, have a high risk of pregnancy and can be exposed to sexually transmitted diseases.

''Part of the healing process ... is returning power back to the victim, and this means for the person to have full rights over determining his or her medical care issues and his or her reproductive health issues,'' Gomez said.

(This version DELETES an incorrect reference to the actual amount received as $5.3 million. Walsh says the $6 million figure is not in dispute. )

State wage laws also protecting illegal workers

By Maria Sacchetti
The Boston Globe
December 29, 2008

Except for his meticulous records, the fish man was invisible.

He hustled for years in anonymity behind the seafood counter at Super 88 supermarket in Boston, serving up heaps of swordfish, salmon, and striped bass for $6 an hour. What customers did not know was that he earned less than the minimum wage, and that he was never paid overtime for his 14-hour shifts. Sometimes, he was not paid at all.

Because the fish man is an undocumented immigrant, he was unlikely to complain to government officials. Then one day, he took a plastic bag of pay stubs to a lawyer, who used these and other documents to file a complaint with the state attorney general's office demanding his full pay.

To the fish man's enormous surprise, he won.

Super 88 agreed to pay $200,000 in back wages and fines this summer, divided among the fish man and more than 300 other workers, a major victory in a burgeoning statewide effort to curb increasing workplace abuses against immigrants. Increasingly, officials are enforcing a state law that requires that all workers, even those here illegally, are paid for their labor.

"I was just collecting what was rightfully owed to me," the fish man, who declined to use his name because he fears deportation, said in Spanish in his lawyer's offices at Greater Boston Legal Services. "They already pay us a miserable amount of money. Why do they have to rob us?"

Authorities say such exploitation has proliferated in recent years as immigrants surged to 17 percent of the state's workforce, nearly double the amount in 1980. Immigrants - legal and illegal - are easy prey for unscrupulous bosses because immigrants may be uncertain of the laws, language, and customs of their new land, advocates say. Illegal immigrants who fear deportation are the most vulnerable.

Super 88's general counsel Glenn Frank said the company's owners are Vietnamese immigrants who were also unfamiliar with the state's labor laws. He said they had hired people they thought were following the rules. Now, he said, they have paid fines and back wages and are being monitored by the state.

Lawyers and advocates say that beyond the unfairness to victims, abuses against immigrants are a threat to American workers, because the practices - common in cleaning, construction, and other industries - could spread to the general workforce during the economic downturn.

"It's a huge problem," said Russ Davis, executive director of Massachusetts Jobs with Justice, which, with other nonprofits, launched the "Fair Wage Campaign" three years ago after reports of immigrant workers exploitation. "We really need some major way to address it, and if not, the economy in Massachusetts is going to spiral down into sweatshop conditions."

In the past year, Attorney General Martha Coakley's office has hired more bilingual staffers, made it possible to file a complaint in 90 languages, and distributed a logbook to nonprofits that serve immigrants so that workers can track their hours and wages.

The crackdown by lawyers and state officials is forcing companies to pay.

Last month, Greater Boston Legal Services brokered an $850,000 settlement on behalf of 764 former workers at a New Bedford factory raided last year by immigration agents. The factory had failed to pay overtime and other obligations. In May, the attorney general's office got C-Mart Supermarket in Chinatown to pay more than $66,000 in wages and fines for failing to pay workers the state's minimum wage, now $8 an hour, plus overtime and other wages. Centro Presente, a nonprofit in Somerville, said it had recovered more than $10,000 for workers in various businesses this year.

As part of its investigations, the attorney general's office does not ask workers about their immigration status, saying it is enforcing state law and not federal immigration law. The approach has drawn criticism from groups that oppose illegal immigration.

"No government resources should be devoted to the rights of people who are here illegally," said Steve Kropper, cochair of Massachusetts Citizens for Immigration Reform, which favors stricter controls on immigration. "They broke the law by being here. They had no right to the job."

Coakley was unavailable for an interview for this story.

Typically, immigrants file complaints through immigrant rights groups from Boston to Springfield, such as the Chelsea Collaborative or the Brazilian Immigrant Center in Allston. The groups are strapped for cash, but the demand for help is growing.

One recent night, two dozen workers bundled in coats and hats crowded into a chilly room, lighted by a bare bulb, in the Brazilian Immigrant Center. A volunteer took their complaints.

Luiz, a drywaller here illegally from Brazil, said he was owed more than $2,000 for a drywalling job. Izabeli, also from Brazil, said she was never paid $325 for scrubbing toilets four nights a week in a Copley Square restaurant. When she pressed for the money, her boss left her a telephone message in English asking for her green card.

"I don't want him to think we are stupid, that you can do that to people," said Izabeli, who speaks only Portuguese.

Some companies are accused of taking elaborate steps, such as setting up sham companies, to hide abuses.

At Super 88, the fish man said, he was paid both by check and in cash. The check made it appear that he worked normal hours and was paid overtime. In reality, he worked 14-hour shifts six days a week - for a flat rate of $6 an hour. The cash made up the difference.

The man, a soft-spoken father of five from Guatemala, said he took the job at Super 88 in late 2004 after a construction job grew too dangerous. He was painting houses for $10 an hour on rickety ladders without safety harnesses.

"It's like we're worth nothing," he said, shaking his head. "I was worried. But I was also worried about my family because I had to send them money."

He acknowledged that he had broken the law and paid a smuggler $6,000 to sneak him into the United States in 2004, but he said he did that because he could not find a job and wanted his children to stay in school. He had to drop out in second grade to work.

At Super 88, the fish man briskly attended long lines of customers. He knew he earned less than the minimum wage, which was $6.75 at the time. Every few months, he asked for a raise.

Each time, he said, the supervisors laughed and refused.

"I tried to give them the best service I could," he said. "My work is important to me."

Soon, his hours were unexpectedly cut back. Money started disappearing from his paycheck.

Then one day he went to file income taxes with a lawyer at Greater Boston Legal Services - something many illegal immigrants do, using special identification numbers from the IRS, in hopes that it will help them if they ever have a chance to apply for legal residency.

He told the lawyer about his problems at work. Using his pay stubs and log of hours worked, they filed a complaint with the AG's office. He was fired last year before the complaint was resolved, he said, after being falsely accused of stealing food. The fish man has since got a new job in a restaurant.

Frank, the Super 88 counsel, said he hopes the state will now enforce the same wage rules against Super 88's competitors, to keep them from undercutting the company's business.