Slave Next Door (36 page)

busy.” Sandy responded by closing the First Baptist Church to concerts

and home stays until all the boys had been given a clean bill of health.

When the Board of Health tested them, twenty-one of the twenty-six

Bales_Ch07 2/23/09 11:02 AM Page 170

1 7 0 / T H E F I N A L E M A N C I PAT I O N

boys skin-tested positive for tuberculosis. The state of Texas provided

the boys with a free six-month course of medicine, requiring constant

supervision, which Keith Grimes was clearly not willing to provide.

Within a short time of the diagnosis, he had sent the entire twenty-six-

boy choir back to Africa, a few at a time, and brought over another

group—this choir containing the eleven-year-old orphan Given

Kachepa and ten other boys. He also made plans to bring over one hun-

dred more boys, whom he would house in RVs when on the road (to

avoid all contact with host families), and tour the entire country. He

put out an impressive marketing effort and raised significant contribu-

tions and commitments from across the country. An extraordinary self-

promoter, Grimes still found a welcome in many churches, schools,

and shopping malls. At one point, Grimes assembled a choir of blind

boys from Liberia, with whom he briefly toured, and whom he also

abused, until his sponsor got a sense of Grimes’s practices, took the

boys away, and cut off his funding.

Sandy’s First Baptist Church was no longer among the organiza-

tions that welcomed Grimes or the choir. Feeling that “it was wrong to

let the ministry continue to exploit the boys,” she was instrumental in

closing the church’s doors to Grimes. Comparing notes with others

who had contact with Grimes, Sandy called the FBI to request an

investigation, while others wrote to the governor and lieutenant gov-

ernor of Texas, their state and national senators and representatives,

the then–attorney general Janet Reno, and Oprah Winfrey. The FBI

responded that they saw no reason to pursue an investigation; there

were no other replies.

When he got wind of the attempts to investigate his ministry, Keith

Grimes was furious. He began to harass Sandy and her pastor and,

with the help of his daughter and son-in-law, kept the church families

from visiting or speaking with the boys. Calls to Grimes’s “ministry”

were neither answered nor returned, and the attempts made by Sandy

and her friends to help or liberate the boys apparently came to nothing.

By late 1998, Sandy was completely frustrated; believing she could

do nothing further for the boys in the choir, she turned her attention to

creating the school in Kalingalinga that Grimes had promised years

before. She resolved to provide an education for the twenty-six boys

who had been sent home in disgrace. With contributions from hundreds

of people, Sandy and a few others formed a committee that rented a

small building in the village. They hired a teacher and put a sign over

the door, reading “Chifundo Junior and High School.” In Nyanja—the

Bales_Ch07 2/23/09 11:02 AM Page 171

S L AV E S I N T H E N E I G H B O R H O O D / 1 7 1

boys’ native language—
chifundo
means “grace.” The committee

intended to keep the school open for at least three years. The initial con-

tributions paid for books, supplies, rent, and the teacher’s salary, in

addition to a $15 “soap money” fee for each of the boys who attended

the school. Of the original twenty-six boys, twenty-four went to the

Chifundo School.

At the end of the three-year period, some of the boys had graduated,

and Sandy’s committee opened the enrollment to community children.

But the contributions were running out, and the school stood in danger

of closing. Then a member of Sandy’s congregation died and left a gen-

erous bequest to build a bigger, better-equipped, and permanent

Chifundo School. By 2008 the committee was holding architectural

plans and awaiting the approval of the Zambian Minister of Education

so they could start construction. The Zambian boys will be working to

help build the school, which will offer two classrooms and a computer

lab for grades eight through twelve.

Keith Grimes’s death from brain cancer and the operation of his min-

istry by his daughter and son-in-law have been described in chapter 5,

as well as his daughter’s attempt—foiled by the Immigration and

Naturalization Service (INS)—to have four of the boys from the last

group deported as “troublemakers.” While an INS agent was busy

investigating the ministry, the other seven boys contacted him, saying, in

effect, “Come get us, we quit.”

The agent had placed the original four boys with local families while

he conducted his investigation; now suddenly, he had seven more on his

hands. He called Sandy’s pastor and asked if anyone in the congregation

could house the seven boys. The pastor immediately phoned Sandy,

whose first reaction was “Why am I being called again? I’ve closed that

door!” But she agreed to help, and because of the urgency she took in all

seven boys, keeping them for five days while finding other host families.

The boys were beyond terrified. To keep them in line, Grimes and his

family had filled their heads with stories about the cruelty of the

American police and had told them that the Colleyville congregation was

“wicked” and would abuse them. Grimes had saved the worst vilification

for Sandy, categorizing her as a “cruel witch.” Sandy knew nothing of

this, and as she recalls, “When the boys met me, they thought they were

doomed!” They had come out of slavery, and now they feared worse.

While Sandy had the boys as houseguests, the INS agent dropped

off seven fourteen-page depositions—one for each of them to fill

out. However, since they couldn’t read or write, the task fell to Sandy.

Bales_Ch07 2/23/09 11:02 AM Page 172

1 7 2 / T H E F I N A L E M A N C I PAT I O N

Meanwhile, it became necessary for Sandy to install caller ID on her

phone in order to warn her when the Grimes family tried to reach the

boys—which they often did. Going around to her neighbors she found

the boys odd jobs—doing yard work, painting fences—to keep them

busy and earn a little money. There were many meetings with the INS

agent and health officials, and many of the boys needed inoculations

and medical exams. In time, the boys were given “deferred action”

status, which granted them social security cards and picture IDs, so that

they could work. With their status resolved, Sandy began contacting

families who had known the boys when they were touring, trying to

arrange more permanent living situations. It took three months, but she

managed to find good homes for all seven. Finally, Sandy thought, she

could catch her breath.

At this point Given was thirteen, and he and an older cousin went to

live with a woman in Childress, Texas. He had been orphaned at nine

and had lived in Kalingalinga with his cousin’s family until Keith Grimes

brought him to Texas two years later. Now he had made new friends,

owned his own bike, and was looking forward to attending school. Then

suddenly the woman sent Given to visit Sandy “for a few days” and fol-

lowed up with a letter telling Sandy that the responsibility of raising two

boys was too great and that she couldn’t handle it. Given was homeless

again. His cousin was immediately taken in by a former host family in

St. Louis, leaving Given uprooted, without friends or family, in the home

of a woman he’d been indoctrinated to fear and hate. Sandy was in the

throes of preparing her two younger daughters to go away to college—

one for the first time—and she and Deetz had been looking forward to

the quiet of an “empty nest.” All at once, after having raised three girls,

she was responsible for an emotionally ravaged adolescent boy who

refused to communicate or even come out of his room. After much

deliberation, Sandy told Given he could stay through Christmas. She

enrolled him in eighth grade, but the boy found it hard going. Sandy

proceeded to spend four to six hours a night, every night, helping him

with his homework. And as she says, “My heart changed through the

fall.” By the time Christmas came, there was no way she would give him

up. In the spring, the Shepherds became Given’s legal guardians. (They

offered adoption, but he preferred to keep his Zambian citizenship.)

Their life together was far from easy. The Shepherds had no idea

what was coming next. They feared deportation for Given, as well as

other legal problems. The TVPA was brand new, and its provisions were

not well known or tested. Sandy set about researching what legal services

Bales_Ch07 2/23/09 11:02 AM Page 173

S L AV E S I N T H E N E I G H B O R H O O D / 1 7 3

were available to trafficking victims and applied for a T visa—not just

for Given but for several of the other boys as well. Given was awarded

his T visa in August 2003; had he not received it, it is likely he would

have been deported.

Perhaps hardest of all—on Given and on the Shepherds—was Given’s

period of adjustment. It combined the painful growth processes of a

teenage boy, which the Shepherds had never experienced firsthand, with

separation from his cousin, who was his lifeline and his only real family

in America. He was also suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Given had been a slave, and like many freed slaves he was having a hard

time dealing with what had happened to him. “There were times,” says

Sandy, “where I thought we were going to lose Given, and times when I

thought he was going to lose us. We feared he would run away.”

Then came the turning point. When Given was sixteen, Sandy took

him to a human trafficking conference in Austin, and—after listening to

several speakers postulate on how to find and approach victims of traf-

ficking—Given spoke up for the first time as a survivor of modern-day

slavery. He so impressed his listeners that he was invited to address the

Texas Committee on Jurisprudence. Shortly after that he appeared on

the TV news program
Nightline.
Other speaking engagements and

appearances followed, and suddenly this troubled high school student

had become a respected, sought-after spokesperson on human traffick-

ing. And along the way, he found his inner peace. As Sandy states, “He

moved from being a victim to being a survivor.” Talking about his expe-

riences helped Given to understand and deal with the trauma he had

suffered. He now divides his time between school—he’s received a

number of scholarships and is studying to become a dentist—and tour-

ing the country, addressing colleges, NGOs, and government organiza-

tions. Wherever he goes, Sandy accompanies him with support and

encouragement. He calls her his mother, and the Shepherds see Given as

part of their family. In the most literal sense of the word, Sandy didn’t

actually
free
Given; but on a much deeper level, she did.

From Massage Parlor to Human Traf ficking Activism

Sarah Schell (not her real name) is a remarkable young woman. In 1995,

when she was a young teenager, her upper-middle-class parents moved

to a major East Coast city to work for a prominent congressman while

she remained at home in Brattleboro, Vermont. Living on her own,

Sarah earned excellent grades in high school, along with an advanced

Bales_Ch07 2/23/09 11:02 AM Page 174

1 7 4 / T H E F I N A L E M A N C I PAT I O N

placement degree. She began to make plans for college but found that

she lacked the tuition. Then, on a visit to her parents, she happened to

see an ad in the city’s newspaper, offering foreign or American college

girls work in a massage parlor. “I was naive,” she recalls, “that a rep-

utable newspaper would run such an ad.”6 Sarah interviewed with the

woman who ran the place, and she took the job. She kept it for nearly

ten years. “I made lots of money, and put it towards college. That’s how

I justified what I did. Nowadays, I’d have been classified as a trafficking

victim when I started, because I was underage.” But in the mid-1990s,

there was no trafficking law in place, so she was merely a young coed,

moonlighting in the sex trade.

While working at the massage parlor, Sarah became aware of another

operation just upstairs, offering older Asian women for a much lower

price. “I was averaging around $600 take-home a day, and these women

were only charging $60 per one-hour session. They were given half, and

from that, the ‘mama-san’ who controlled them deducted all sorts of

fees—for towels, food, everything. They were making next to nothing.”

Because of the Asian women’s lesser status, Sarah’s colleagues looked

down on and ridiculed them.

Sarah recalls, “I felt bad for them. We shared a security camera—so

that we’d always know when the clients, or the cops, were coming in—

and I’d always smile and wave. Then one day, a client of one of the Asian

women threw up in our common lounge, and I helped the woman clean

it up. She smiled and thanked me, but when she went back upstairs, I