Slave Next Door (27 page)

Attorney’s Office, and assistant U.S. attorney Leslie Cornfeld. Legal Aid

of New York was brought in by the city to represent the victims. And

counseling was provided by an experienced victim advocate, Florrie

Burke, through the New York–based Lexington Center for the Deaf. At

the time, Burke was executive director of the center’s Lexington Center

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for Mental Health, and she immediately set about assembling an on-site

team to work with law enforcement and city officials to develop a social

service program for the victims.

Some of the Mexicans could read lips, and since de Baca spoke

Spanish he was the natural choice to establish a line of communication.

He learned some sign language and worked with the trial team to set up

a system of bilingual “relay interpreters,” frequently utilizing a deaf

Latino sign interpreter. Over time, some of the Mexicans learned

American Sign Language (ASL).18 Through a combination of signing,

writing, and drawing, the victims—“among them pregnant women and

children and infants”—told how they’d been exploited by the Paolettis,

lured with “promises of a sweeter life,” only to have their papers and

documents taken, making it virtually impossible for them to flee.19

By the time the “Deaf Mexicans” case made the news, various private

organizations and political figures had become involved. Several civil

lawyers volunteered to work on the case. Congressman and Senate can-

didate Chuck Schumer and Mexico City mayor and presidential hopeful

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas both made an appearance. New York mayor

Rudy Giuliani ordered the city to help with resources and placed the

Mexicans in city housing.20 Meanwhile, several of the Paolettis, as well

as their henchmen and relatives, were arrested; they pled guilty and

were sentenced to long terms in federal prison. Adriana was given a sen-

tence of fourteen years. As for the vast sums of money the Paolettis made

from the work of these people, very little has been found. There is con-

jecture that it was smuggled to Mexico, although Lou de Baca feels that

much of it simply went to support the family’s rich lifestyle.

Two of the higher-ups in the family—Jose Paoletti Moreda and his

son, Renato Paoletti Lemus—could not be found and initially were pre-

sumed to be on the run. As it turned out, they were serving time in a

Mexican prison, but by late September 2006, when they were finally

sentenced in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, twenty survivors of the

Paoletti slavery ring were there to witness it. Some submitted letters to

the court expressing their outrage at their traffickers. And—through a

translator—angrily, passionately, ten of them told their stories. “We

were slaves,” signed one, “and we have nothing to show for it. I am very

angry. We did not want this to happen. I just wanted to let you know

this.”21 In signing, the broader and more energetic the hand and arm

movements, the more emotional is the message.22 On sentencing day,

the signing was marked by “waving, wild hand motions, convey[ing]

anger and sadness.”23

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For the two years following the deaf Mexicans’ liberation, Florrie

Burke and her team provided counseling, eventually helping to create

an education program and provide job training and placement. Of the

nearly sixty survivors, around fifteen chose repatriation; the others

decided to stay and make their lives in the New York area. Because

their case predated the passage of the 2000 Trafficking Victims

Protection Act (TVPA), they were given S visas. This was an unusual

application of this type of visa, generally used in cases involving

organized crime and terrorism, that is employed to protect the wit-

ness from possible retaliation in the home country. Some of the sur-

vivors took jobs in retail stores or as baggage handlers. The same

pattern that existed under the Paolettis has reemerged in freedom:

those who were continually high performers for the traffickers con-

tinue to be star employees in the world, while those who performed

poorly still function at a lower level and, in the words of Lou de Baca,

“will need a support network all their lives.”24

The survivors are clear as to what happened to them: “They see

themselves as having been enslaved, as victims of fraud, and now, as sur-

vivors. The most important concept to them is
estar
—the Spanish verb

‘to be’—but in this case it translates to mean ‘to matter, to signify.’ They

want people to understand who they are and that they exist.”25 Florrie

Burke explains, “They are proud of the fact that they’re now ‘legiti-

mate.’ They have status here and the ability to learn new skills, they can

send their children to school and no longer be ashamed of what they’re

doing. On the flip side, there’s real loneliness. They’re separated from

their families and by their disability. Still and all, they’re free.”26

Sing a Song of Slavery

Trafficking, more often than not, entails a betrayal of trust. When the

betrayer is a minister of the church and the victims are children, the

crime is particularly egregious. In the 1990s, a Texas missionary group

calling itself “Teaching Teachers to Teach” (TTT) set out to fund and

build schools in Zambia, South Central Africa. At one point, TTT staff

members traveled to the village of Kalingalinga, Zambia, where they

heard a group of boys singing in an a capella choir. Impressed with their

voices and their harmony, one of the TTT staff, a Baptist minister from

Sherman, Texas, named Keith Grimes, decided to bring the boys home

with him. In the United States he planned to set up benefit concerts,

ostensibly raising money to build the schools and provide living

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essentials for the members of the boys’ village. For their part, the boys

would receive a good education and be well taken care of.27

Grimes immediately began scheduling venues for the group, which he

named the ZABC—Zambian Acapella Boys Choir. This choir would be

only the first of several boys’ choirs he would bring over—and enslave.

As predicted, the choirs did well, filling halls wherever they performed,

and the money began to pour in. Little of it ever reached Zambia; no

schools were built, and each of the boys’ families received only $20 a

month. Grimes, working with his daughter, kept nearly every dollar the

choir earned. He also forced the boys to sing as many as seven concerts

daily and locked them in a trailer when they weren’t singing. He denied

them medicine when sick and food if they dared to complain or refused

to sing. He forced them to dig him a swimming pool by hand in the hot

Texas sun. And he told them that if they tried to escape they would be

severely punished. When any of the boys resisted his control, they were

deported in shame to Zambia—along with Grimes’s report to the par-

ents that their sons had been “bad”—and replaced with “good” boys.28

At one point, the Department of Labor, alerted to labor abuses,

ordered Grimes and his daughter to pay the boys; they did so, giving

each of them $645—then taking back $600 of it, as payment for “home

schooling” (nonexistent), medicine (denied), and food (cooked by the

boys themselves in their trailer, when Grimes deigned to turn on the

gas). Nothing had changed.29

By January 2000, Grimes had died of a brain tumor, and his daughter

and her husband were running the operation. The most recent choir

group consisted of eleven boys, who had believed that despite the harsh

conditions at least their friends and families in Zambia were being well

provided for as a result of their concerts. When they discovered the truth,

they resisted. In the interest of damage control, Grimes’s daughter acted

to deport the four boys she saw as the prime “troublemakers.” At this

point, the whole choir demanded to be deported, in support of their

friends. When officials of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization

Service—through close questioning of the boys—found out what had

been occurring at the minister’s house, they were incredulous. A church

choir, enslaved by a man of God—such things simply didn’t happen, and

certainly not here! The facts were borne out, however, and the group was

rescued. Of the eleven boys in the choir, ten elected to remain in the

United States. Most of them have not done well. Alcoholism is a common

thread, and they have little or no contact with their families in Zambia.

One of the boys, Given Kachepa, is a rare exception. Orphaned at

nine, Given had lived with his cousin in the village of Kalingalinga. As

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was common in the village, the house in which he lived had no door and

no running water. A fire built on the floor of the hut provided for both

heat and food preparation. Given, along with most of the residents of

Kalingalinga, lived on one meal a day. Only eleven and an orphan when

trafficked by Grimes (who falsified the boy’s age on his passport), Given

lived in slavery for two years; after the Grimes ring was shut down, he

was adopted by a family in Colleyville, Texas, and introduced to a new

life as a middle-class American. Since then, he has graduated high

school and will soon graduate college, where he is studying to be a den-

tist. Given also travels throughout the country with his legal guardian,

Sandy Shepherd, sharing his experience and lecturing on the realities of

slavery in America. He was instrumental in helping Texas draft an anti-

trafficking law in 2003. Given is extremely bright, expresses love and

gratitude to the Shepherds, and bears no outward signs of bitterness.

When describing Rev. Grimes, he says, “He was a different man in

Zambia—well-dressed, polite, and he made promises. . . . When he got

here, he became pushy, intolerant. When a boy comes to a new country,

he will make little mistakes because he doesn’t understand its ways; but

Mr. Grimes would get extremely angry over the smallest things.”30

When asked whether conditions in Kalingalinga have improved in the

past twelve years, Given replied, “Nothing has changed.”31

The choir was freed in January 2000; the TVPA didn’t pass until

October, so Grimes’s daughter and her husband were not charged, since

no one seemed to know what to charge them
with.
In those early days

of trafficking awareness—and without the legal provision of psycholog-

ical coercion to lean on—unless there were the physical marks and scars

associated with slavery, officials were reluctant to pursue a case. Sandy

Shepherd tells of the frustration when she and several involved neigh-

bors repeatedly tried to contact members of law enforcement in hopes

of helping the boys and punishing the couple. According to Shepherd,

their efforts to connect with the FBI, then–attorney general Janet Reno,

and various federal senators and congressmen, as well as such media fig-

ures as Oprah Winfrey, brought only frustration. The boys’ alleged traf-

fickers will never spend a day in prison.32

Enslaving the Mentally Ill

Arlan Kaufman and his wife, Linda, took slavery to a whole new dimen-

sion. Both in their sixties, the Kaufmans were, as far as their neighbors

in Newton, Kansas, knew, an upstanding couple—doting parents and

grandparents and solid members of their community. They regularly

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attended Sunday services at the Faith Mennonite Church and played an

active part in church activities. In the eyes of those who thought they

knew them, the Kaufmans also performed an admirable service for the

community. Arlan held a doctorate in clinical social work, and Linda

was a registered nurse. For twenty-four years, they operated Kaufman

House, which encompassed three residential facilities for mentally ill

patients. Arlan had refused to obtain a license for his homes, but this

struck no one as anything beyond an eccentricity. Several such homes

throughout the state operated without licenses.

But gradually, over the course of years, a grim pattern of enslavement

and mental and physical abuse emerged. The Kaufmans had broken

trust with their patients and sunk to an almost incomprehensible level

of behavior. The first glimpse of scandal came in November 1999, when

children on a school bus passing the Kaufman’s farm saw people work-

ing in the fields—in the nude. The bus driver complained to the Butler

County Sheriff’s Office. When investigators questioned Arlan Kaufman,

he explained that these people—residents of his facilities—were “natu-

ralists” who practiced nudity as part of their philosophy. The truth was

that the residents were deprived of their clothing as “punishment” for