Slave Next Door (41 page)

place of worship, in the Chamber of Commerce, or in a high school. When

even a small group of people is committed to ending slaver y, the process

of creating a slave-free city has begun.

2. This group then shares its vision with all the people and groups that will be

needed to slave-proof the city—the city council, the mayor, the police chief,

heads of education, religious leaders, teachers, ser vice organizations from

the Boy Scouts to the Rotar y Club, and especially the editors and managers

of local newspapers and radio and TV stations. Ever y one of these commu-

nity leaders and others will need a visit and an explanation of the plan to rid

the community of slaver y forever.

3. The Plan for a Slave-Free City has five par ts:

a.
Public Awareness Raising:
The message is, there is slaver y in America

today, but this community has decided to say “No!” The campaign should

include ar ticles in the local newspaper and repor ts on TV and radio, a

proclamation by the city government, and special assemblies in schools.

Places of worship and community groups will disseminate information.

b.
Driving Home the Message:
After the buildup of awareness raising in the

schools and the press and on TV and radio, ever y household should

receive a booklet that explains the realities of modern slaver y and how to

recognize and report suspected cases of human trafficking and slaver y.

c.
On the Streets:
Ver y early, before the campaign is actually begun, there

should be a meeting with local law enforcement and a plan made for offi-

cers to receive training on human trafficking and slaver y. This training is

available from a number of professional sources. The aim should be for

the training to take place as the public awareness campaign begins and

to be featured in the news of the campaign. Training should also be

planned for other workers who are likely to come into contact with vic-

tims of human trafficking—nurses and other medical staff, public health

and labor inspectors, mail carriers, even gas station employees.

d.
In the Shops and Retirement Funds:
While the more public par t of the

campaign is being carried out, a committee—including members of the

city council, local business leaders, religious leaders, teachers, bankers,

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and investment brokers—should be looking into three areas of the city’s

economy: what local businesses might be using slave-made goods or

commodities in their production; what goods are being sold in the com-

munity that have a high likelihood of being slave made; and what stocks

and shares being invested in for local pension plans and other invest-

ments have a high likelihood of deriving profits from slave labor. A city

with a plant making car par ts, for example, will need to look at the pos-

sibility that the raw iron and steel in the plant comes from Brazil and may

be tainted with slaver y. The aim will not be to suddenly rip these materi-

als, products, and shares out of the community but to make careful deci-

sions about how best to work with suppliers and businesses to remove

slaver y from shops and investments and to use that process to aler t

and explain the ideas of a Slave-Free City to businesses and investors.

e.
Ongoing Public Recognition:
The campaign can open with a proclamation

that this community is going to become a Slave-Free City. After the major

par t of the initial campaign is completed, perhaps after three to six

months, the mayor or other city leader should repor t to the community

on progress and publicly commit to the ongoing vigilance needed.

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8

S TAT E S O F C O N F U S I O N

A S M O R G A S B O R D O F S TAT E S A N D S L AV E RY C A S E S

Slavery, in its many forms, exists in every state in the country; the cases

don’t lack variety. Among the hundreds of cases brought to light over the

past eight years have been instances of forced agricultural labor in

Florida, New Hampshire, and Colorado; slave-driven sweatshops in

American Samoa; enslaved domestics in New York, Michigan, and

Washington, D.C.; and women and children forced to engage in com-

mercial sex in Tennessee, California, and New Jersey. Below are a few

snapshots of human trafficking cases that have been prosecuted in a

handful of states.

In Alaska, in 2001, seven Russian women, two of whom were under-

age, were given false visas and hired to perform “traditional folk

dances.” Instead, their “employers” forced them to dance nude at the

Crazy Horse strip club and took their passports, plane tickets, and tips.

The traffickers housed them in squalid quarters and used the threat of

violence to keep them in line. Ultimately, police arrested four people,

three of whom admitted to visa fraud and bringing minors into the state.

The more severe charges of forced labor and kidnapping were dropped.1

In Hawaii in 2004, a jury convicted a man of smuggling seven men to

Hawaii from the small Pacific island of Tonga and enslaving them on his

pig farm in Waipahu. Here they were forced to work in the man’s land-

scaping business and were frequently beaten with tools. They were fed

poorly; sometimes the men were so hungry that they caught and ate

dogs. The owner was found guilty on thirty-four counts, among which

were forced labor, involuntary servitude, and alien smuggling.2 He was

sentenced to twenty-six years.3

In New Jersey in August 2006, two Honduran immigrant sisters

entered guilty pleas in a Hudson County federal court. They admitted

to bringing dozens of girls, some only fourteen years of age, into the

country and forcing them to live together in ramshackle apartments.

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To repay their “debts,” which ran as high as $20,000, the girls had to

dance six days a week at North Jersey bars and drink with the cus-

tomers. According to one of the traffickers, “prostitution was encour-

aged,” and the girls were beaten if they broke the rules. Their pay was

five dollars per hour plus tips, but most of it went to paying what they

were told they owed. One of the girls was forced to take an abortion

pill after becoming pregnant, and she prematurely delivered a still-

born child.

The two sisters were named as part of a ring that trafficked girls

from Honduras over the Mexican border and up into New Jersey. By

pleading guilty to charges of forced labor, conspiracy, and harboring

illegal aliens, the sisters avoided having to face charges of human traf-

ficking, which bring considerably heavier penalties. Fourteen of the

young girls were certified as trafficking victims, and they and their fam-

ilies received visas.4

In Georgia in late 2007, thirty-one-year-old Stone Mountain native

Jimmie Lee Jones, a.k.a. “Mike Spade,” pled guilty to various traffick-

ing charges, including forcing eight young women—two of whom were

minors—to “engage in commercial sex acts through force, fraud, and

coercion.” Representing himself as a casting agent looking for models,

Jones was in reality a “gorilla pimp” who recruited his “girls” through

misrepresentation and then used physical and mental abuse to keep

them in line. He faces a maximum fifteen-year sentence.5

A T R I O O F H O U S E S L AV E C A S E S

In Maryland, a Gaithersburg couple, Rene and Margarida Bonetti,

were indicted on violations of various immigration laws relating to the

treatment of their sixty-five-year-old “domestic,” Hilda Rosa Dos

Santos. They had kept the illiterate Brazilian woman enslaved for fif-

teen years, beating her regularly, scalding her with hot soup, and deny-

ing her food, pay, and medical attention. Her rescue came about only

after neighbors took her to the hospital with a “stomach tumor that

had grown to the size of a soccer ball.” Margarida fled the country, but

Rene went on trial, claiming as his defense that the old woman “was a

costly and horrible housekeeper.” Facing a maximum of thirty-five

years in prison, Rene was given a six-year sentence and ordered to pay

Dos Santos restitution.6

In Colorado, a Centennial couple was convicted in August 2006 of

enslaving a twenty-four-year-old Indonesian woman for four years. The

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S TAT E S O F C O N F U S I O N / 1 9 7

wife was sentenced to two months in jail and ordered to pay over

$100,000 in restitution; her husband was convicted of imprisoning and

sexually abusing the woman. Typically, they had commandeered the

woman’s passport, made her sleep on a mattress in the basement, and

forced her to care for their children.7

Finally, in Michigan in mid-2007, two Cameroonian naturalized U.S.

citizens—Joseph and Evelyn Djoumessi—were sentenced in Detroit to

terms of eighteen and six years, respectively. They were also ordered to

pay over $100,000 in restitution to a young Cameroonian girl whom

they had held in involuntary servitude, forcing her to watch over their

children and clean the house, without pay. They had also beaten her—

with a spoon, a shoe, a belt, or whatever implement was handy. And

Joseph had sexually abused the girl.8

These three cases involving enslaved domestics occurred in very dif-

ferent parts of the country, but they show two similarities that apply to

almost all slavery cases. The first is the wide disparity in the punish-

ments for what appear to be the same basic offenses. Some of the more

serious offenders seem to get off with the lightest sentences. This can

happen for various reasons: a plea bargain, a lenient judge or difficult

jury, a case that’s deceptively difficult to prove despite a long history of

abuse, a difference in the nature of the charges from one case to another.

If a prosecutor doesn’t feel a trafficking charge can be proven, he or she

might choose to prosecute on lesser or parallel charges that he or she

feels have a greater chance of a guilty verdict. The results are in no way

predictable. Trafficking cases are among the hardest to prosecute, rely-

ing as they often do on the proof of psychological coercion. The result

is that when a slaveholder gets caught in America, there is little certainty

that the punishment will fit the crime.

The second common thread running through all these cases, and

hundreds more like them, is that they were taken to court by federal, not

state, prosecutors. The trials took place in the states where the offenses

occurred, but they were all adjudicated on the federal level. While the

Department of Justice (DOJ), Immigration and Customs Enforcement

(ICE), the FBI, and whatever other federal agencies would have received

assistance from state and local cops to make the case, the charges, the

prosecutors, and the courtrooms themselves were all federal.

Don’t the states have their own antislavery and anti–human traffick-

ing laws? In fact, the majority of them do. Since the passage of the

Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), there has been a growing

state-level awareness of trafficking. This growth is reflected in the press:

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“Human Trafficking Becomes a Problem in Virginia,”9 “[Georgia] to

Crack Down on Human Trafficking,”10 “Human Trafficking in North

Texas,”11 “Human Trafficking in Idaho,”12 “Human Trafficking—in

D.C.,”13 “Human Trafficking, in Minnesota,”14 “[Florida] Takes on

Modern Slavery,”15 “[Utah] Legislators Target Human Trafficking,”16

New Law Makes Human Trafficking Illegal in Iowa,”17 “[California] a

Hot Spot for Human Trafficking.”18 Many states have asked themselves

tough questions and faced the hard truth that slavery exists within their

borders. For most of them, the next step has involved passing their own

antislavery and anti–human trafficking statutes; and the federal govern-

ment has offered help, in the form of a model law.

M O D E L A N T I T R A F F I C K I N G L AW S F O R T H E S TAT E S

In 2004, the DOJ created a model statute for the fifty states, based on

the TVPA, in anticipation of an enthusiastic nationwide response. The

Model State Anti-Trafficking Criminal Statute was the first such model

trafficking law, and it was distributed widely. The model law’s purpose,

according to the DOJ, was to ensure “seamless partnerships in combat-

ing human trafficking.”19 The DOJ cited three objectives in their tem-

plate: “prevent gaps between federal and state laws; promote a national

legal strategy to combat trafficking that would facilitate greater coordi-

nation and reduce confusion on the part of both victims and law

enforcement; and provide examples of the most effective legislative

approaches to address trafficking.”20

From a criminological standpoint, the model was fairly compre-

hensive in that it addressed both “labor,” with its qualifying force and