Women Against Slavery

Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girls Next Door

2011-05-25T18:21:00.002-04:00

Great article in this month's Vanity Fair Magazine about child exploitation in North America. Check out the link !

Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girls Next Door
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/05/sex-trafficking-201105

US Repeats Policy Mistakes In Uzbekistan

2011-05-16T15:23:00.001-04:00

Since the May 2005 armed uprising in Andijan, the US has been slowly rebuilding its relationship with Uzbekistan, culminating most recently in the Uzbek government’s almost instantaneous agreement to allow its territory to be used by the US Department of Defense as a key link in the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) supplying US and ISAF forces in Afghanistan. The importance of the NDN to the Afghanistan war effort cannot be overstated given the constant interdiction of supplies through Pakistan by the Taliban and its Pakistani supporters in recent years. However, this fragile US-Uzbek relationship appears to be on the verge of possible collapse due to arcane and illogical actions by the State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (G-TIP).
The G-TIP Office, part of the State Department’s Bureau of Global Affairs, has taken up the cause of a number of anti-Uzbekistan NGOs and possibly competing cotton exporters to vilify Uzbekistan over the continuation of the Soviet-era policy of mobilizing students and government officials to assist in annual agricultural harvests, in the case of Uzbekistan, the cotton harvest. G-TIP recently released an interim assessment of the countries placed on the Tier 2 Special Watch List, and Uzbekistan is among them. Tier 2 Special Watch List is a category between Tier 2 and 3, where countries are placed if they do not fully comply with the minimum standards of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA), but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards (Trafficking in Persons Interim Assessment, April 5). A Tier 3 rating would trigger suspension of most US assistance although given the NDN issue, the State Department is likely to issue a waiver in the event of the Tier 3 rating. However, Washington has made it clear that a Tier 3 rating will have consequences.
Ignoring the clear progress that Uzbekistan has made in regard to true trafficking in persons problems, the interim report gave Uzbekistan a negative assessment while at the same time praising progress by some of its neighbors such as Tajikistan and Turkmenistan (which have done little or nothing in regard to actual transnational trafficking of persons but have made some superficial moves, mostly funded by donors, in regard to cotton harvest labor). In particular, the Uzbekistan assessment began with the statement that “the government made no progress in combating domestic forced labor in the cotton sector and government complicity related to this forced labor. The use of forced child and forced adult labor remained widespread and systematic during the 2010 fall cotton harvest. The government took no steps to end the use of forced labor during the harvest and continued to facilitate it” (Trafficking in Persons Interim Assessment, April 5).
Although the Uzbek government has a presidential decree in effect against forced labor in the harvest, it admittedly does little to monitor the situation and local communities are responsible for meeting quotas. The lack of able-bodied adult male labor in rural communities due to labor migration to Russia and Kazakhstan, as well as to Tashkent and other major Uzbek cities, leaves little labor available to help in the harvest which for Uzbekistan, among the six largest producers of cotton worldwide and third in exports, is crucial to its foreign exchange earnings.
Anti-Uzbek cotton campaigns launched in 2008 by international and local US and UK organizations specifically target Uzbekistan. They pressure their governments and retailers to punish manufactures and producers who buy Uzbek cotton and propose the introduction of sanctions against Uzbekistan. While other top cotton producers, such as China, India, and Pakistan, where the involvement of children and adults in the cotton industry is much harsher and on a greater scale, do not appear to be in the focus of the G-TIP report or the campaigners.
Labeling the involvement of people mobilized from Uzbek communities, seasonally to assist in cotton harvesting as human trafficking by G-TIP is stretching the definition of the term and appears to be a continuation of the political campaign launched in the US and Europe (the UK in particular) in 2008 against Uzbekistan by political activists adamantly opposed to the current government. The involvement of children in labor has a cultural aspect, which was promoted once the collectivization process started in the Soviet era. Children were encouraged to help their farmer parents and relatives in cotton, corn, vegetable or other fields. Cotton production in Uzbekistan also has to be considered from a historical perspective. The Soviet legacy made cotton a high economic priority and a backbone of the economy in Uzbekistan. As the country was subjugated by Russia and forcibly transformed into the Russian Empire’s principal cotton colony, it created the labor chain of cotton production with a substantial level of social security despite the wage levels (Pros and Cons of Cotton Production in Uzbekistan, 2010).

Disabled Woman was Tortured and Held as a Sex Slave

2010-09-26T17:42:00.001-04:00

By Robert Patrick for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Friday, September 10th, 2010.

A Kirkwood man arrested by the FBI on Thursday was one of four Missouri men who paid a fifth to either watch him torture a mentally disabled woman online or torture her themselves, prosecutors said.

The 20-page federal indictment, unsealed with the men's arrests Thursday, contains accusations of sexual and physical torture lasting five years, acts that U.S. Attorney Beth Phillips called "among the most horrific ever prosecuted" in the Western District of Missouri.

The alleged torturer, Edward "Master Ed" Bagley Sr., 43, of Lebanon, Mo., tattooed the woman to mark her as his slave, convinced her that she was legally "bound" to him and threatened her, prosecutors said. He also is accused of forcing her to work as a stripper.

Bagley tortured the woman for five years, until he induced a heart attack while suffocating and electrically shocking her on Feb. 27, 2009, prosecutors said. She was hospitalized.

Her hospitalization sparked an 18-month investigation that led to the charges.

Those alleged to be customers for the woman's forced services included Bradley Cook, 31, of the 11500 block of Big Bend Road in Kirkwood; Dennis Henry, 50, of Wheatland, Mo.; Michael Stokes, 62, of Lebanon; and James Noel, 44, of Springfield, Mo., prosecutors said. Henry's occupation was listed as postmaster general of Nevada, Mo., but that could not immediately be confirmed Thursday evening. Cook, according to state records, is a licensed real estate broker associate.

The indictment alleges that Bagley met the woman when she was 16 and a runaway and persuaded her to move into his trailer with promises of a "great life" and a future as a model and dancer.

She got her own room, furniture and TV, and Bagley began giving her drugs, showing her pornography and sexually abusing her, prosecutors said.

When she turned 18, he persuaded her to sign a 'sex slave contract," which he said bound her to him for life, prosecutors claim.

Bagley "beat, whipped, flogged, suffocated, choked, electrocuted, caned, skewered, drowned, mutilated, hung and caged" the girl "to coerce her to become a 'sex slave,'" the indictment says. It adds that he tied her up and hung her in the air, locked her in a dog cage and used staples, nails and a sewing needle and thread during torture sessions too violent to describe.

For the full article click here.

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This story, which broke last week, is one of the most disturbing and horrific that I have heard. This case should remind us of the urgency of the issues Ashley Keller discussed in her analysis of the intersections of human trafficking and disability issues: "[USAID also reports] that the rate of child prostitutes with mild developmental disabilities is six times greater than what is expected within the general population. This marginalized group is underrepresented and does not have access to the tools they need to become empowered. . . As Human Rights Watch notes “disabled women and girls face the same spectrum of human rights abuses that non-disabled women face, but their social isolation and dependence magnifies these abuses and their consequences”. . . We, as moral, rational and reasoning beings, cannot allow these people to be swept under the rug and forgotten any longer."

Old Slavery v. Modern Day Slavery Part III (conclusion)

2010-09-14T21:21:00.002-04:00

By Ashley Keller

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Part of the Human Trafficking Students' series on HTP

Take Action

There are different national and international organizations for disabled persons. These organizations are made up of people with and without disabilities. While this is good news, sadly, this is new. Groups and organizations in the past have not thought to have disabled persons on their committees, which again leaves this population without a voice. These new integrated and accessible groups and organizations are using their insight to help implement accessible programs, or change existing programs in order to make them accessible. They are doing this by diversifying environments, i.e. taking a multicultural, multi-gender, multi-ability approach to problems and ideas.

There is also a greater urgency to educate and train the general public. This allows people to better understand and appreciate this population of people. It is very important for everyone to know that whether someone is disabled or not, they are all still people and they most definitely have value. They deserve the same human rights as those without disabilities. Unfortunately there is not much information out there on human trafficking and the disabled. Awareness is required in regards to human trafficking, but when this entire population is overlooked and left without a voice; people are not getting the whole story. This population needs to be brought up in conversations, classrooms, websites and statistics.

As Human Rights Watch notes “disabled women and girls face the same spectrum of human rights abuses that non-disabled women face, but their social isolation and dependence magnifies these abuses and their consequences”. This is a real problem and these people need our help as much as the men, women and children who are drug into this dark reality by force, fraud or coercion.

We need to give this population a voice, if possible, and if not, be the voice they so desperately need. The media can do this by reporting on this ugly truth through pictures, articles and documentaries. The media needs to make it known that this issue is alive and it is everywhere, not just in some far off country. While many countries have taken strides to criminalize human trafficking they continually fail to prosecute these perpetrators. Through research it was noted that most individuals detained in relation to human trafficking are released by the time a trial or sentencing arrives for “time served”.

There needs to be collaboration and cooperation between many different government and non-government agencies in order to bring light to this seemingly overlooked topic within the larger picture of modern slavery. Law Enforcement, families, cultures, hospitals, education agencies, and prosecutors all need to understand the ramifications of their beliefs and actions, or lack thereof. By working together, which is a feat in and of itself, fewer and fewer individuals will fall through the cracks.

As the great Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “to ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it”. We, as moral, rational and reasoning beings, cannot allow these people to be swept under the rug and forgotten any longer.

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Ashley received her B.A. in Psychology from Immaculata University this past semester. She has worked with individuals with autism for about 10 years and is currently working as an ABA therapist doing Early Intense Behavioral Intervention. This coming semester she will be student teaching to receive her Elementary/Special Education teaching certifications. She also plans to pursue graduate level programs in order to continue her work and understanding of individuals with autism.

Is Trader Joe's Selling Slave-Picked Produce?

2010-09-14T16:19:00.001-04:00

Is Trader Joe's Selling Slave-Picked Produce?
-Amanda Kloer
Trader Joe's presents itself as a hip, progressive place to shop, full of vegetarian options and free from the plethora of hot orange processed snacks found elsewhere. But Trader Joe's refuses to take one very critical progressive step and join the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' (CIW) Campaign for Fair Food. And because of their refusal, you might just be buying slave-picked produce from those friendly, Hawaiian shirt-wearing joes.

Modern-day slavery is a reality for many farm workers right here in the U.S. In Florida, over 1,000 people have been identified as trafficked in fields and on farms, picking the food we eat every day. Farm workers have also been trapped in slavery or seriously abusive conditions in California, Washington, North Carolina, Maryland, and several other states with large agricultural industries. Because the laws governing agriculture are different than those regulating other industries in the U.S., many of these workers don't have the same legal protections the rest of us do.

Trader Joe's is no stranger to dealing with labor and transparency concerns. Two years ago, a 17-year-old girl suffered a fatal heat stroke while picking grapes for Charles Shaw wine, the "Two Buck Chuck" Trader Joe's is famous for. And folks over Change.org's Sustainable Food property are asking the company for better transparency in their organic food sourcing. TJ's has also gotten flack for selling un-sustainable seafood and fish from places like Thailand and Bangladesh, where slavery in the fishing industry is common. That's a pretty poor track record for a company with a progressive, conscious customer base.

Old Slavery v. Modern Day Slavery Part II

2010-09-13T21:33:00.002-04:00

Part of the Human Trafficking Students' series on HTP

By Ashley Keller Old Slavery v. Modern Day Slavery Part II

It is commendable that human trafficking is getting more and more attention and global awareness is on the rise. But, the small amount of information regarding this marginalized group is simply not enough, especially when there are statistics that report there are approximately 340 million women with disabilities (Amon, 2010)!

Even more stunning, not only is there a severe lack of information regarding human trafficking and disabilities worldwide, but there are entire United Nations and United States government reports, among others, that include hundreds of pages of statistics and personal accounts with no mention of this group of individuals. My nickname for them has become the forgotten people. That is precisely what they are, forgotten, omitted, passed over, left out.

It is incredible that with all the disability acts, services and initiatives, in the United States and around the world, that they have been so easily forgotten! The Bureau of Justice Statistics completed a National Crime Victimization Survey in 2007. This survey included nonfatal violent and property crimes against individuals with disabilities. Individuals with disabilities were victims of approximately “47,000 rapes, 79,000 robberies, 114,000 aggravated assaults, and 476,000 simple assaults”. It was also found that disabled persons had a “1.5 times higher rate for persons without disabilities” to be involved in a nonfatal violent incident. Not surprisingly, their survey also found that “females with a disability had a higher victimization rate than males with a disability”.

On the other hand, among typical individuals, males had a higher victimization rate than females. In Joseph Amon’s article entitled Invisible Women he states that “at least 10 percent of the world’s population is believed to live with a disability…half - 340 million - are women”. Sadly the voices of these women are not heard because they do not fit neatly into one group. They are women, but they are disabled, so they are not included in any women’s movements and even though they are disabled they are not necessarily included in any disability movements because they are women.

As previously discussed, the four major vulnerabilities of trafficking are poverty, ignorance, minority and being a female. According to Stop Violence Against Women, women make up 75% of the disabled population. This means that 75% of the disabled population has at least three out of the four major red flags that increase vulnerability to human trafficking. They are disabled which makes them a minority and often creates a lack of knowledge, and on top of that they are women. Because of the incorrect belief that sex with a virgin will cure HIV/AIDS, many women and children in this category are victimized.

This is due to another false belief that because these women are disabled, they are also virgins (stopvaw, 2009). UNICEF reports, that virtually 100% of disabled females in India are beaten, 25% are raped and 6% are forcibly sterilized. In South Africa battered women services are not accessible.

Children suffer a high rate of victimization in this population as well due to the fact that “impairments often make children appear as ‘easy victims’”. This is not only because they may have difficulty in defending themselves or in reporting the abuse, but also because their accounts are often dismissed (UNICEF, 2008). Children in general, and children with disabilities in particular, are thought to have unreliable testimonies of situations that occur, including those involving exploitation and abuse.

USAID reports on some facts that they received from UNICEF, and it has been reported that in Thailand prostitution houses seek deaf girls. Their thought process behind this is that not many people know sign language so these girls will not be able to communicate effectively in order to get help. This specific disability serves to isolate these individuals even more than a typically developing individual trafficked into an unknown country.

They also report that the rate of child prostitutes with mild developmental disabilities is six times greater than what is expected within the general population. This marginalized group is underrepresented and does not have access to the tools they need to become empowered. Unfortunately, even organizations that make attempts to help fall short of being accessible to this population worldwide.Continued Tuesday September 14th, 2010.

**********Ashley received her B.A. in Psychology from Immaculata University this past semester. She has worked with individuals with autism for about 10 years and is currently working as an ABA therapist doing Early Intense Behavioral Intervention. This coming semester she will be student teaching to receive her Elementary/Special Education teaching certifications. She also plans to pursue graduate level programs in order to continue her work and understanding of individuals with autism.

The Forgotten People of Modern Day Slavery Part 1

2010-09-10T20:36:00.002-04:00

Friday, September 10, 2010

Part of the Human Trafficking Students' Series on HTP

By Ashley Keller
Old Slavery v. Modern Day Slavery Part I

Enslavement of individuals predates our history. It has been around since the beginning of man. However, it was not until sometime in the 15th century that slavery focused on a certain group of people, the African Americans (Mintz 2007). When I speak of “old slavery” I am referring to the Transatlantic Slave Trade. There are some engrained similarities to old slavery when compared to modern. For instance, there is a loss of control and free will on the victim’s part, and it continues to be exploitation for profit. The enslaved are broken down to a sort of commodity to be traded, bought and sold. Their humanness is ripped away and replaced with a monetary value. However, modern day slavery, also known as human trafficking, is not the slavery from our history books. The old slavery was hyper focused on a specific group of people, African Americans, whereas modern day slavery “cuts across nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, age, class, education-level, and other demographic features” (National, 2010; Polaris 2009).

People are easier and cheaper to buy than ever before. It is estimated that the slaves of history were ten times more expensive then modern day slaves (Polaris 2009). The ease and cheapness of modern day slaves creates an issue of “disposability” because of the inexpensiveness of the “investment” (Bales, 2004). This “disposability” poses yet another threat to the countless, nameless, voiceless individuals caught in this hell.

Due to the fact that slaves are so cheap, there is much less motivation for the traffickers to take care of their “investments” because there are plenty more when needed. There are many reasons that individuals may be trafficked. Some of the reasons are: debt bondage, sexual exploitation, forced labor/service like domestic labor, agricultural labor, sweatshops, begging, hard labor, soldiers, hospitality industries and many more. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime reports that 161 countries have been identified as being affected by human trafficking (Trafficking in Persons: Global Patterns).

Human Trafficking and Disabilities

The International Labor Organization estimates that 2.4 million people were trafficked between 1995 and 2005. The 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report reports that 12.3 million adults and children were trafficked in 2009, at a rate of 1.8 people per 1,000 worldwide. In 2007, the Trafficking in Persons Report stated that 800,000 people are trafficked across borders every year, of which about 80% are women and girls and up to 50% are children. In the U.S. State Department’s “The Facts About Child Sex Tourism: 2005” it is reported that approximately 1 million children are sexually exploited every year throughout the world.

This statistic, as are most, if not all, is broken down into specifications of age and gender, but there is no specific information as to how many of these individuals have a disability. As defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act, a disability is; “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; a record of such an impairment; or a person regarded as having such an impairment”.

Human trafficking and disabilities is a severely under addressed topic in the discussion of human slavery. There are very few reports on its incidence. In 2009, Stop Violence Against Women wrote an article called “Violence Against Women with Disabilities”. They report that children in orphanages are at a higher risk for violence. Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery – Belgium reports that gangs throughout Belgium’s major cities organize begging rings using children and individuals with disabilities, typically from Romania (Patt, 2010). Due to the lack of understanding, financial means and cultural stigmas, discussed further below, children with disabilities are a source of shame to their families.

Research indicates that violence against children with disabilities occurs at least 1.7 times greater annually than for their peers without disabilities (disabledworld). There are many reasons as to why these families give up their children, such as not having the knowledge or financial resources to care for these children. Other reasons are extensions of cultural beliefs. UNICEF reports, “[s]ocial beliefs about disability include the fear that disability is associated with evil, witchcraft or infidelity, which serve to entrench the marginalisation of disabled people” (2008) . As a result, these children wind up in orphanages where they are much more susceptible to violence. Women and girls with disabilities are especially vulnerable to physical and sexual violence which puts them in danger of unplanned pregnancies due to sexual exploitation.

A child who requires assistance with washing, dressing and other intimate care activities may be particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse. Perpetrators can include caretakers, attendants, family members, peers or anyone who enjoys a position of trust and power (UNICEF, 2007).

People with disabilities are not seen as individuals who deserve dignity and respect. Even if a pregnancy occurs within a normal situation, not having to do with sexual exploitation, disabled women often do not have a choice in whether they can keep their children and abortions are forced upon them. Disabled women are also forcibly sterilized so that the issue of pregnancy will not become a recurring issue (UNICEF, 2007).

Not only are disabled children dumped off into the system and stripped of their inalienable human rights, but as they grow up they are blacklisted from employment. The factors that are thought to cause the most vulnerability for an individual to be trafficked are being impoverished, lack of knowledge or ignorance, others also discuss that being a female and a minority exacerbate the issues (UNIAP, 2007). However, the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking and the Strategic Information Response Network (SIREN) warn against over generalizing the vulnerabilities being dealt with by different cultures and areas. They suggest that it is naïve to enter an area assuming that the issue is the same as others. They argue that it is important to know the people, the culture and the problems before implementing a program in order to provide assistance.

Many groups go to help, but assume generalizations as fact and set up information programs and funding programs to fix the ignorant and impoverished in order to combat those specific vulnerabilities. However, those may not actually be the issue (UNIAP, 2007). In Cornell University’s 2007 Disability Status Report, they show that the employment gap between individuals with and without disabilities is 42.8%, in the United States alone (Baker, 2008). This enormous gap in employment exacerbates the vulnerability of poverty that these individuals experience by denying them access to a self-sustaining life with gainful employment.

Continued Monday, September 13th, 2010.

**********
Ashley received her B.A. in Psychology from Immaculata University this past semester. She has worked with individuals with autism for about 10 years and is currently working as an ABA therapist doing Early Intense Behavioral Intervention. This coming semester she will be student teaching to receive her Elementary/Special Education teaching certifications. She also plans to pursue graduate level programs in order to continue her work and understanding of individuals with autism.

STU, Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen to Host Forum on The Fourth 'P': Combating Human Trafficking through Public-Private Partnerships

2010-09-04T01:50:00.002-04:00

MIAMI, Sept. 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Ambassador at large CdeBaca, Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State and Director, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking In Persons, U.S. Department of State, will join Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen Monday, September 13, 2010 at Miami's St. Thomas University School of Law for a unique dialogue on the important role of the public/private partnership in combating human trafficking.

Reverend Monsignor Franklyn M. Casale, President of St. Thomas University, as well as Dr. Roza Pati, Professor and Executive Director of STU School of Law's Graduate Program in Intercultural Human Rights, have been actively involved for the past few years with efforts combating human trafficking. Monsignor Casale testified before the Congressional Foreign Relations Committee during the process of the enactment of the Wilberforce Act. Professor Pati has been working on human trafficking issues in various capacities since the mid 1990s. Her presentations and research focus on issues of state responsibilities in fighting human trafficking, human rights approach to trafficking vis a vis criminal law approach, issues of prevention and the role of academia as part of civil society's combat on human trafficking.

Invited by the Bicameral Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee of the Argentinean Congress of the Nation, Pati had joined teams of governmental, intergovernmental and non-governmental experts on human trafficking coming from various parts of the Western hemisphere, discussing, among other topics, the new draft law on human trafficking presented to the Congress of Argentina. Other symposia and international conferences, panels and dialogues have been launched through St. Thomas' academic endeavor. Dr. Pati had also facilitated the formulation of The Miami Declaration of Principles on Human Trafficking, a consensus document of policies drawn up by global experts at St. Thomas University on February 10, 2005 designed to combat human trafficking from a victim-oriented perspective. She also drew on her experience in the field gained as the Secretary of State for Youth and Women in the Cabinet of her homeland Albania.

"Anyone who is involved in the world-wide fight against modern-day slavery is well aware of the three 'P's approach to addressing this issue: prevention, prosecution, protection. 'The Fourth P'--effective partnerships -- amongst governmental agencies inter se, as well as amongst these institutions with the NGO sector will be the driving force in tipping the balance to eradicate the lingering phenomenon of modern-day slavery. A phenomenon as insidious as trafficking in persons and of that magnitude can only be confronted through the mobilization of the whole community in all its layers: public and private," says Dr. Pati.

The Forum features government and private sector representatives in a meaningful discussion on partnership. The event takes place from 9AM-12PM, in St. Thomas University's Moot Court Room. For additional information on the academic conference and/or the Intercultural Human Rights program, LL.M and J.S.D., please call 305-474-2403 or email HUMANRIGHTS@STU.EDU. Attendance to the September event is free and open to the community.

What:
A meaningful discussion on the issue of public-private partnership will take place under the title: The Fourth "P":

Combating Trafficking in Persons through the Public-Private Partnership

When: September 13, 2010, 9AM-12PM

Where: St. Thomas University School of Law, Moot Court Room

Who:

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, United States Congress

Ambassador Louis CdeBaca, Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State Director, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking In Persons U.S. Department of State

Rev. Msgr. Franklin Casale, President
St. Thomas University

Prof. Dr. Roza Pati, Executive Director
LL.M./ J.S.D. Program in Intercultural Human Rights
St. Thomas University School of Law

Maria Jose Fletcher, Esq., Director of LUCHA— Women's
Legal Program, Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center

Suzy Cop, Member of the Florida Statewide Task Force on Human
I Trafficking, International Rescue Committee

Media Contact: Marivi Prado, Chief Marketing Officer

305.474.6880; mprado@stu.edu

SOURCE St. Thomas University

This Labor Day, Will Trader Joe's Agree to Fair Food?

2010-09-04T01:43:00.002-04:00

Two weeks ago, my coworker Karen and I left the office a little early and walked across Manhattan to the Trader Joe's store in Chelsea, where a small group had gathered making signs and chatting. Among them were members of the Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a grassroots group working to improve wages and working conditions for farmworkers. Over the course of about 45 minutes, dozens more people filled the sidewalk in front of the store, including labor activists from the Jewish Labor Committee, Just Harvest USA and the Farmworker Solidarity Alliance, as well as local youths and a handful of musicians from the Rude Mechanical Orchestra.

Trader Joe's, along with Publix, Kroger, and Dutch-held Ahold grocery chains (which include Giant, Stop & Shop, Martin's and Peapod), are the most recent targets of CIW's Fair Food Campaign. Over the last nine years the Coalition, together with partner organizations like the Student/Farmworker Alliance, has managed, through well-organized consumer campaigns and sometimes boycotts, to convince some of the food industry's largest corporations (including Taco Bell/Yum Brands, McDonald's, Subway, Whole Foods and Compass) to agree to the tenets of Fair Food: an extra penny a pound for tomatoes (nearly doubling the wages for pickers, who've not seen a raise since the mid-1970s), a labor Code of Conduct, greater transparency in the supply chain and incentives for growers that respect human rights.

The major fast food wins the Coalition has enjoyed have not come without a fight - in 2007, Burger King hired private investigators to spy on the Student/Farmworker Alliance and vice president Stephen Grover was caught using his daughter's online alias to smear the group virtually. Chipotle, a chain built on promises of "food with integrity," is the highest-profile holdout, and has spent the last few years dodging the Coalition. But they've made much greater strides with restaurants than with the grocery chains - only Whole Foods, which like Chipotle built its reputation on ethically-sound food, has managed to sidestep the bad publicity that heel-dragging retailers have experienced.

Like Whole Foods and Chipotle, Trader Joe's attracts a decidedly progressive league of shoppers, but has managed, at least until recently, to avoid much scrutiny, in part perhaps through what CNN Money recently dubbed its "obsessively secretive" behavior. The chain has not escaped controversy entirely - two years ago, when 17-year-old Maria Vasquez suffered fatal heat stroke in a California vineyard that grew grapes for Charles Shaw wine, also known as Two Buck Chuck, which is sold by the chain, labor activists were quick to pressure Trader Joe's to push its suppliers for stricter adherence to labor regulations. But if Joe is feeling the heat, he's not showing it. My email to the company was left unanswered, and Chelsea Now reporters Bonnie Rosenstock and Scott Stiffler received an evasive response from TJ's publicist, Alison Mochizuki:

At Trader Joe's, we work with reputable suppliers that have a strong record of providing safe and healthy work environments and we will continue to make certain that our vendors are meeting if not exceeding government standards throughout all aspects of their businesses.

A few weeks before the Trader Joe's rally, Karen and I met before work (to shoot the video below) at Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village, where the CIW's mobile Modern-Day Slavery Museum had set up shop for the day to educate passers-by about six of the seven cases of slavery prosecuted on behalf of farmworkers in recent years. The museum, housed in a cargo truck similar to the one that held enslaved workers in one of the cases, puts these modern abuses into historical perspective, documenting Florida's checkered past from the days of Spanish chattel slavery, through its use as a hub for importing African slaves and the creation of systems of state-sanctioned slavery, like the convict-lease program of the late 1800's, through which the state would actually rent out African-American men, often convicted on questionable charges, to farm owners. It points out the fact that farm laborers were specifically left out of Roosevelt's New Deal in 1935, and have still never been awarded rights that were extended to other kinds of workers 75 years ago, including the right to bargain collectively. Since then, the most common form of labor abuses entail "debt peonage," often using a "company store" set up, sometimes withholding wages so that workers lack cash to buy food and other goods anywhere but from the employer, who sells them to employees at radically inflated prices.

But the six cases of modern slavery on display are a radical departure even from these abuses and hearken back to the days when slavery was a way of life in the American South. Prosecuted and won between 1997 and 2008, the cases involved forced, underpaid and even unpaid labor, physical violence and in some cases, kidnapping and imprisonment. The Coalition was instrumental in the uncovering and investigation of each of these six cases, and it was out of this work that the Fair Food Campaign was born.

Often, farmworkers are especially vulnerable because they are undocumented and in fear of being deported - and the blame for engaging in illegal work always falls on them, rather than on the growers, distributors, restaurateurs and retailers who profit from their cheap labor (and whose punishment, if it comes, tends toward the wrist-slapping variety). Florida's most recent case of slavery, indictments for which came down in July, is an excellent example - Haitian nationals were allegedly lured to Florida with promises of decent jobs, had their passports taken from them upon arrival and were basically imprisoned, barely fed and in one case, raped by her captor. And just yesterday, in what the FBI is calling the largest case of human trafficking ever brought to court in the US, six were charged - including four from labor contractor Global Horizons - allegedly involved a similar bait-and-switch, as well as passport withholding.

Even for those among us who are shocked and appalled by these sorts of abuses, it is easy to turn a blind eye and believe company spokespeople who seek to assure us that they would never do business with growers who would abuse the rights of their workers. But without a much greater level of transparency in our food system, and without giving workers the right to bargain collectively, how are retailers or their patrons ever to know where corners may be getting cut to provide us with the low prices we crave? Most Americans, particularly those with no ties to agriculture, have no clue that such abuses still happen, let alone that they may be complicit in such exploitation through their purchases, which is why the Modern-Day Slavery Museum is such a powerful vehicle.

If you eat a tomato this weekend - or even if you hate tomatoes - try to honor the holiday by thinking about who picked it. If, like those of us in New York, you've been suffering an uncommonly hot summer, consider what it might be like to pick two tons of tomatoes a day under the Florida sun, all to earn $50 or $60. Ask yourself if you'd want to earn a more livable wage, to be assured things like access to water and shade and protection from pesticide spray, and to have a voice in the circumstances under which you went to work. I would.

Three Charged In Human Trafficking Case

2010-09-04T01:31:00.000-04:00

By Liz Thomas
9/2/2010

Three people are accused of forcing an 18-year-old woman into prostitution.

Marion County Deputy Prosecutor Jody Hilger calls Chris Smiley, Ayannah Willis and Lotoya Harlin modern day slave traders.

They're facing ten felony counts for allegedly making the victim work as a prostitute inside Indy motels, selling her on the internet to a string of "Johns."

Hilger confirms it's one of the first cases of human trafficking in Marion County, but she says it's a bigger problem than most residents realize.

Brazil prepares guide to help prostitutes return home and start over

2010-09-04T01:27:00.000-04:00

Brazil prepares guide to help prostitutes return home and start over
By Tales Azzoni (CP) – 2 days ago

SAO PAULO — Brazil is telling the victims of human trafficking gangs that they're welcome to come back home. The government said Wednesday it is preparing a guide to aid the return of those lured into prostitution abroad.

The announcement came a day after Spain broke up a ring that used dozens of Brazilian men to work as prostitutes, giving them Viagra, cocaine and other stimulant drugs so they could available for sex with other men 24 hours a day.

The guide will include information on how to return to work or school in Brazil, the Foreign Ministry said.

"Those who want to come back must know that they have opportunities in Brazil," said Luiza Lopes Ribeiro da Silva, the ministry's head of consular assistance. "They need to know that they can return and that we will support them."

The guide, to be released in three weeks, will be available in all Brazilian consulates abroad, and will help instruct consular workers who usually are the first to be contacted by those wanting to return, the ministry said.

The guide will also provide information on a witness protection service for those wanting to give police information about the human-trafficking gang that gave them jobs as prostitutes.

Those wanting to return will also receive aid on starting their own business and on receiving health care, the foreign ministry said.

Spanish authorities on Tuesday arrested 14 people, mainly Brazilians, on suspicion of running a human-trafficking ring. They also detained 17 alleged prostitutes for being in Spain illegally.

It is not clear how many people are trapped by such networks. A recent foreign ministry study said Brazilians are attracted by lucrative offers to work as models or dancers in Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Most are saddled with huge debts for their trips and then are threatened to get them to work as prostitutes.

"Many times they are victims of violence abroad," Silva said. "But they don't want to return because it would mean to them that they failed. We want to show that they can come back, there will be help awaiting them so they can get back on their feet."

Copyright © 2010 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Bishop condemns trafficking stance

2010-09-04T01:24:00.000-04:00

Bishop condemns trafficking stance
(UKPA) – 4 hours ago

The Archbishop of York has called the Government's decision to stay out of a new draft EU directive on human trafficking "seriously flawed".

Dr John Sentamu said he believed the decision not to opt in to the directive meant the UK would damage its ability to influence co-ordinated EU policy on the problem - particularly in relation to sex trafficking.

Writing in the Yorkshire Post, the archbishop said: "Sex trafficking is nothing more than modern-day slavery.

"This is women being exploited, degraded and subjected to horrific risks solely for the gratification and economic greed of others. I am therefore stunned to learn that the Government are 'opting out' of an EU directive designed to tackle sex trafficking. Generally, I am no great supporter of European directives, because of the supremacy of our Parliament, but this seems to be a common-sense directive designed to co-ordinate European efforts to combat the trade in sex slaves."

Dr Sentamu said: "The Home Office stated this week that 'the Government will review the UK's position once the directive has been agreed'. I believe that position is seriously flawed."

The archbishop quoted International Labour Organisation figures to stress how 2.45 million people around the world are in forced labour as a result of people trafficking and 43% of these are involved in commercial sexual exploitation. He said hundreds of thousands of people were being trafficked into or within the EU each year.

Former Labour Europe minister Denis MacShane has written to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg urging the Government to reconsider its position on the directive, saying: "It is the wrong signal to send to the pimps and traffickers."

But the Government has defended its decision not to opt in to the directive at this stage. The directive is aimed at co-ordinating efforts across EU countries and will allow the prosecution of offenders in one state for offences committed in others.

Earlier this week, the Home Office said: "While the draft directive will help improve the way other EU states combat trafficking, it will make very little difference to the way the UK tackles the problem as there are no further operational co-operation measures which we will benefit from. Opting in now would also require us to make mandatory the provisions which are currently discretionary in UK law.

"These steps would reduce the scope for professional discretion and flexibility and might divert already limited resources. The Government will review the UK's position once the directive has been agreed, and will continue to work constructively with European partners on matters of mutual interest."

Copyright © 2010 The Press Association. All rights reserved.

Northern Ireland police rescue 15 women from sex traffickers

2010-09-04T01:18:00.000-04:00

Fifteen women have been rescued from sex traffickers in a major crackdown on brothels in Northern Ireland, it was announced today.

The women, who are from EU countries, were being forced to work as prostitutes in Belfast, the PSNI said. Police arrested three people in connection with the raids.

Detective Chief Superintendent Roy McComb, head of the PSNI organised crime branch, said: "This is modern-day slavery where human beings are treated like commodities by sophisticated organised crime gangs who are making substantial criminal profits from the sex trade.

"These gangs have no thought for the health and well-being of their victims. They see them simply as instruments to help them generate cash."

McComb added: "Human trafficking and prostitution is no longer gender specific. Men and women are being tricked or forced into prostitution in major towns and cities. They are being robbed of their liberty, stripped of their dignity, and suffer intolerable conditions as unwilling emblems of the sex trade."

Patrick Yu, executive director of the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities, said the discovery was welcome but warned that the women needed protection.

"In most cases they don't want to testify (against their captors) because their family may be in danger at home," he said.

Patricia Lyness, a project manager at the Women's Aid Federation, said the authorities had made an effort to improve their handling of the trafficked women.

6 charged in human trafficking scheme involving Thai workers

2010-09-04T01:01:00.001-04:00

(CNN) -- Six job recruiters have been indicted in federal court in what the FBI has called the largest human-trafficking operation ever to result in charges in the United States.

An indictment unsealed in Hawaii on Thursday accuses employees of a California-based company of luring about 400 people from Thailand with false promises of lucrative jobs. Many of the imported workers wound up laboring on farms under substandard conditions, had their passports confiscated, and were threatened with deportation.
In one instance, several Thai workers allegedly were detained at a pineapple farm on Maui and told to pay an additional fee of $3,750 to keep their jobs. Those who refused were sent back to Thailand with unpaid debts.

"The object of the conspiracy was to obtain cheap, compliant labor," said the indictment, "indebted by the defendants' recruitment fees, and to compel the workers' labor and service through threats to have the workers arrested, deported, or sent back to Thailand."

The workers were brought to the United States under the federal H2-A visa program, which places foreign workers on U.S. farms. The case was investigated by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the FBI in Honolulu, where many of the guest workers wound up.

Four of those charged worked for labor recruiting firm Global Horizons Manpower Inc., based in Beverly Hills, California. Two Thai-based recruiters also were charged. The operation allegedly began in May 2004.

Global Horizons President and CEO Mordechai Orian, 45, an Israeli national, was accused of leading the conspiracy. His attorney, Alan Diamante, did not return a message seeking comment. A call to the company was not answered.
FBI agents went to Orian's home with an arrest warrant Friday morning, but he was not at home, said Special Agent Tom Simon in Honolulu, Hawaii. He said agents have been in touch with Orian by telephone and are attempting to negotiate his surrender to authorities.

Attorneys for the Thai laborers said many of them initially were taken to farms in Hawaii and Washington state, where the working and living conditions were often deplorable. Other sites included California, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.

Several guest workers alleged one of the defendants, Pranee Tubchumpol, promised them pay of $8.72 per hour, plus overtime, with a three-year employment contract. But when they arrived in the United States, they received a fraction of the money and were warned not to leave or talk with anyone outside the farm.

"Do not escape or flee because the police or Global [Horizons management] will find, deport, or send you back to Thailand," the workers were told, according to the indictment.

The recruitment fees paid by the workers were reportedly as much as $17,000 each, with much of the balance to be paid in the United States, subtracted from the weekly wages. The indictment alleges many of the recruitment fees were financed by debts secured with the workers' family property and homes, which the government says kept many of the employees at the mercy of the defendants.

Tubchumpol, who headed international relations for Global, is accused of being the liaison between the company, the guest workers and the Thai authorities.

Tubchumpol, 44, was picked up in suburban Gardena on Thursday and had an initial court appearance in federal court later in the day, said FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller in Los Angeles, California. She is in federal custody and at some point will be transferred to Honolulu, Hawaii, Eimiller said.

The first court appearance for any of the suspects is scheduled for Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Honolulu, said Special Agent Simon.

He said the other suspects include Shane Germann, 41, who surrendered to the FBI in Fargo, North Dakota, Friday morning; and Sam Wongsesanit, 39, a resident of Kona, Hawaii, who is expected to surrender to the FBI early next week.

Two others are residents of Thailand and are considered fugitives, Simon said. He identified them as Ratawan Chunharutai and Podjanee Sinchai, both females, and said FBI agents in the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok will be working with Thai officials to apprehend them.

If convicted, all of the defendants would face sentences ranging from five to 70 years in prison.

The company says it provides contract labor in 15 countries, including the United States, on four continents.

"Global Horizons Inc. thinks globally and acts locally with a post-9/11-worldview, one which understands that economies cannot continue to grow and prosper without an ample, qualified and legal workforce," says a statement on its website. "Too, it understands the aspirations of countless workers who dream of having better jobs in better places, but who wish to return to their country of native origin when they've completed the job. This fulfills both the economic and security needs of the host country."

Global Horizons was cleared two years ago in a federal discrimination case from Washington state, where it was accused of favoring non-Hispanic farm workers in the hiring and firing process on local farms.

Simon said the investigation is not over.

"There are more than a dozen Hawaii farms that utilized the labor of the alleged victims in this case," he said. "None of these farms have been criminally charged in this indictment. The FBI is attempting to learn the extent that these farms were aware of the forced labor conditions of its workers. With few exceptions, the farms have been cooperating with our investigation."

And other investigations are likely, he indicated. "There are more people living in forced labor today than when President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation," he said. "As long as this is true, the FBI will continue to pursue organizations and individuals involved in human trafficking."

Numerous persons charged with prostitution-related offences

2010-08-23T13:51:00.000-04:00

The Sault Ste. Marie Police Service, in its ongoing effort to address offences in relation to prostitution, has charged 20 individuals with the criminal offence of obtaining the services of a prostitute.

Members of the Sault Ste. Marie Police Service, working cooperatively with the residents of the downtown neighbourhoods that have been most noticeably impacted by this activity, took a balanced enforcement strategy that targeted the prospective "clients" of the individuals selling the sexual acts.

This strategy, utilizing undercover police officers, took place between the evening and early morning hours of Thursday the 19th of August through to Saturday the 21st of August.

The latter part of July saw a similar enforcement approach that targeted the individuals selling the sexual acts. This initiative culminated in four persons being charged with soliciting for the purpose of prostitution.

As a result of this most recent sweep, the following persons will be appearing in court on September 13:

- Sixty-two-year old James Hilderly of 872B Hilderly Road, Echo Bay.

- Forty-year-old Christian Fiaschetti of 305 Michipicoten Avenue, Wawa.

- Fifty-two-year-old Donald Davidson of 60 Sutton Place, Sault Ste. Marie.

- Fifty-year-old Peter Misner of 484 Second Avenue, Sault Ste. Marie.

- Forty-seven-year-old Jean-Marc Quenneville of 1 Tomikolake Road, Crystal Falls, Ontario.

- Fifty-three-year old Landon Odom, 111 Palamino Drive, Sault Ste. Marie.

- Thirty-eight-year old Brian Marion of 44 Village Road, Blind River.

- Sixty-nine-year old Lawrence Mauro of 49 Linstedt Street, Sault Ste. Marie.

- Fifty-year-old Scott Craig of 205 Cemetary Road, Echo Bay.

- Sixty-one-year-old Gene Farquhar of 1147 P Line, Richards Landing.

- Fifty-two-year-old Ken Robinson of 86 Royal York Boulevard., Sault Ste. Marie

- Forty-nine-year old Philip Sequin of 87 Stowe Street, South Woodslee, Ontario.

- Forty-one-year-old Daniel Irwin of 2388 20th Side Road, Richards Landing.

- Sixty-five-year old Charles Lindberg of 440 Victoria Drive, Franklin, Ohio.

- Thirty-seven-year-old Jason Conlon of 47 Cambridge Place, Sault Ste. Marie.

- Thirty-three-year-old Dean Shaule of 527 John Street, Sault Ste Marie.

- Forty-two-year-old Clint Koch of 42 Caples Road, Heyden.

- Thirty-year-old William Collins of 226 Hurley Street, Echo Bay.

- Seventy-three-year-old Edwin Jondreau of 3 Henrietta Avenue., Sault Ste. Marie.

Nineteen-year-old Eric Beer of 117 Andrew Street, Sault Ste. Marie has additionally been charged with one count of possession of a controlled drug (one morphine pill) and one count of breach of probation for failing to keep the peace and be of good behaviour.

The following two persons were charged with obstructing police as a result of this operation:

- Twenty-five-year-old Crystal Hart, 130 Gore Street, Sault Ste Marie.

- Eighteen-year-old Shelbie Zaldiner of 20 Alberta Street, Sault Ste. Marie.

Shoe Revolt- A Social Enterprise

2010-07-30T19:59:00.003-04:00

Philanthropist Ateba Crocker has a great love for ALL humankind, especially for the well being of girls. Her goal is to use Shoe Revolt to improve the welfare of girls across the globe by eradicating the commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking of children through the sale of shoes. This industry is a multi- billion-dollar business and it will take strong financial backing to take a stand against it.

Shoe Revolt’s profits, generated from the sale of shoes, will be donated to Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS), fund transitional housing, create scholarship opportunities and provide much needed mentoring and support for victims.

Ateba believes the time is now to fight with shoe revenue to decriminalize victims and to take political action to create stronger laws that punish the perpetrators. Ateba is serious about this fight and is ready to lock arms with her Shoeista Sisters to declare that enough is enough! It’s time to end the sexual exploitation and commercial sale of children across the globe.

Shoe Revolt is a for-profit company, managed as a social enterprise. We understand that the only way to fight a multi-billion dollar human trafficking and sexual exploitation industry is with dollars. Therefore, our goal is to stomp out human trafficking through a steady revenue stream. Our goal is simple – to use the profit from the purchase of new and donated shoes to financially support anti-trafficking initiatives to eradicate human trafficking for good.

U.S. Launches Blue Campaign To Fight Human Trafficking

2010-07-24T13:37:00.000-04:00

Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Posted on: 22nd July 2010

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano today launched the “Blue Campaign”—a DHS-wide initiative to combat human trafficking through enhanced public awareness, victim assistance programs, and law enforcement training and initiatives.

“The battle against human trafficking is a shared responsibility involving the Department’s federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement partners, non-profit and non-governmental organizations, governments around the world and communities across the nation,” said Secretary Napolitano. “With the Blue Campaign, we seek to shine a light on a crime that thrives in the shadows, bring traffickers to justice, and assist victims in communities across the nation.”

The Blue Campaign was officially launched today by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Alan Bersin, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Deputy Director Ken Keene and Alice Hill, Senior Counselor to Secretary Napolitano—underscoring the unified effort to prevent human trafficking, assist victims and hold traffickers accountable by bringing together the Department’s diverse resources and expertise under one initiative.

To help citizens learn to identify and properly report indicators of human trafficking, the Department is launching public outreach tools that include social media, multilingual public awareness campaigns, and a new, comprehensive one-stop website for the Department’s efforts to combat human trafficking at www.dhs.gov/humantrafficking.

The Blue Campaign also features new training initiatives for law enforcement and DHS personnel, enhanced victim assistance efforts, and the creation of new partnerships and interagency collaboration—including the deployment of additional victim assistance specialists and specialized training for law enforcement personnel.

The Blue Campaign’s name and symbol were chosen by the Department to evoke the “thin blue line” of law enforcement, as well as the global anti-human trafficking symbols the Blue Blindfold, produced by the United Kingdom Human Trafficking Center, and the Blue Heart, developed by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, to help raise international awareness about this issue.

A fact sheet detailing the numerous aspects of the campaign across the Department is available here.

For more information, visit www.dhs.gov/humantrafficking.

Will Va. catch up on fighting human trafficking?

2010-07-24T13:28:00.001-04:00

Last night, Richmonders heard stories of slavery -- but they weren't stories from the 1800s.

"Samantha" told how, at age 14, she was convinced to run away from home by a man she'd met at a mall in New Jersey. Enticed by promises of trips to Vegas and meetings with movie stars, she was instead taken to Atlantic City and sold into slavery as a prostitute.

Virginia is one of only four states lacking a comprehensive law against human trafficking, according to the Richmond Justice Initiative -- a trafficking prevention group that hosted the Thursday evening event.

Still, Virginia is slowly starting to follow the lead of other states taking action against a tragedy that lands as many as 17,500 people in slavery in the United States each year.

-- Last month, Rep. Frank Wolf's office met with officials from the FBI, the U.S. attorney's office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Polaris Project to begin developing a plan for a human trafficking task force in Virginia. The goal? To draw attention to trafficking cases and coordinate investigations and prosecutions.

-- As reported by Peter Galuszka on this blog, Wolf also met in April with Virginia officials, including the state police and attorney general's office, to talk about the issue and call for the state/federal task force.

-- Last year, Gov. Kaine signed a new law expanding the definition of abduction to include abduction for the purpose of subjecting the person to forced labor or services and raising penalties for pimping.

But in the last few years, Virginia's attempts to draw attention to human trafficking have been somewhat feeble. While the General Assembly created the Commission on Prevention of Human Trafficking in 2007, the group met only once that year and three times in 2008. It expired in July 2009.

Legislators aren't entirely ignorant of the issue, proposing more than 20 bills addressing issues of human trafficking in 2005 and 2006. But only one of the bills (dealing with extortion of an immigrant by holding his or her passport or papers) ever made it to the governor's desk.

One hopes that's about to change, depending on how much weight Virginia officials decide to throw behind the new initiative. They would do well to heed a reminder by Sara Pomeroy, member of the Richmond Justice Initiative:

"Just because the 17th Street Farmer's Market is filled with fruits and vegetables instead of slaves doesn't mean slavery doesn't exist in our town, because it does."

Paige Winfield Cunningham is an investigative reporter and managing editor at Old Dominion Watchdog. The Local Blog Network is a group of bloggers from around the D.C. region who have agreed to make regular contributions to All Opinions Are Local.

By Paige Winfield Cunningham | July 23, 2010; 3:30 PM ET

Three Americans Face Charges in Cambodia Sex Tourism Investigation

2010-07-11T15:17:00.003-04:00

LOS ANGELES—The first three defendants to be charged under an international law enforcement initiative targeting Americans who travel to Cambodia to sexually exploit children have been removed from that Southeast Asian nation and are expected to arrive here later today to face prosecution in federal court.

The charges against the three men are the result of Operation "Twisted Traveler," an ongoing effort by the Department of Justice and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to identify and prosecute "sex tourists" who travel to Cambodia to engage in illicit sex with children.

The three defendants currently being transported to the United States were previously convicted of sex offenses in the United States. The defendants will be taken into custody by ICE agents when they arrive at Los Angeles International Airport, which is expected to be sometime this afternoon. The three men, who are named in separate criminal complaints filed earlier this year in United States District Court, are expected to make their initial appearances in federal court tomorrow afternoon. Prior to their return to the United States, the men were arrested and detained by Cambodian authorities on charges related to child sexual exploitation.

At a news conference this morning, United States Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien and Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for ICE John Morton announced the three cases and promised further enforcement actions focusing on Americans who sexually exploit children in Cambodia and other countries.

"The men charged in this investigation apparently thought they could pursue their abhorrent desires by leaving the United States to prey on children in another country, but they were sadly mistaken," said United States Attorney O´Brien. "We are now working closer than ever with officials in other nations and concerned private parties to take every effort we can to identify and prosecute sex tourists, as well as to provide every protection we can to the world's children."

Assistant Secretary Morton stated: "Sexual predators cannot escape justice simply by traveling overseas to exploit, violate and abuse children. Working closely with our partners overseas, ICE will identify people who travel for illicit purposes. We must protect children from sexual exploitation, whether in the United States or abroad. Today's announcement should send a message that traveling overseas to exploit children will not be tolerated and will not go unnoticed."

The Twisted Traveler cases are the result of information provided to ICE by investigators for Action Pour Les Enfants (APLE), a non-governmental organization (NGO) established to combat child sexual exploitation, and International Justice Mission (IJM), a human rights agency that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression.

The three defendants scheduled to arrive in Los Angeles this afternoon are:

Ronald Gerard Boyajian, 49, of Menlo Park, California, who was arrested by the Cambodian National Police (CNP) in February. According to an affidavit by an ICE agent, Boyajian most recently traveled to Cambodia a year ago, where he allegedly engaged in sexual activity with a 10-year-old Vietnamese girl in an area outside Phnom Penh frequented by child sex tourists known as "Kilo 11."

Erik Leonardus Peeters, 41, of Norwalk, California, who was taken into custody by the CNP in late February. The criminal complaint accuses Peeters of engaging in sexual activity with at least three Cambodian boys. The affidavit in the case states that Peeters, who arrived in Cambodia in May 2008, paid the minors $5 to $10 for sex.

Jack Louis Sporich, 75, formerly of Santa Monica, California and now a resident of Sedona, Arizona, who was arrested by the CNP in February. According to the criminal complaint, Sporich sexually abused at least one underage Cambodian boy after he arrived there in November 2008. According to the case affidavit, witnesses interviewed by APLE stated that Sporich often drove his motor bike through the streets of the city of Siem Riep, dropping Cambodian currency as a way to attract children.

The three men are charged under the PROTECT Act, which went into effect six years ago and substantially strengthened the federal laws related to predatory crimes involving children outside the United States by adding new crimes and increasing sentences. Boyajian, Peeters and Sporich each are charged with international travel and engaging in illicit sexual conduct with minors, a charge that carries a statutory maximum penalty of 30 years in federal prison.

The child sex tourism cases announced today are the direct result of the unprecedented cooperation among U.S. authorities such as the FBI and Department of State, the Cambodian government and NGOs to target Americans traveling to Cambodia to sexually exploit minors. In June, a delegation including United States Attorney O´Brien, Los Angeles ICE Special Agent in Charge Robert Schoch and ICE´s Bangkok attaché Barry Tang traveled to Cambodia, where they met with the United States Ambassador to Cambodia, along with the Commander General of the CNP and representatives from APLE and IJM, to discuss the ongoing enforcement efforts.

"These new charges clearly demonstrate to the Cambodian people that the United States will not tolerate this type of abuse," said Carol Rodley, the United States Ambassador to Cambodia. "These cases not only signal to the Cambodian victims our commitment to justice, but they will also act as a powerful deterrent for those individuals who are contemplating traveling to Cambodia to engage in illegal sexual activity with minors.

"Operation Twisted Traveler is a collaborative investigative effort coordinated by ICE´s Office of International Affairs that involves the agency´s Attaché Office in Bangkok and the Los Angeles ICE Office of Investigations. ICE has received substantial support with this initiative from the Department of State's Diplomatic Security Service.

As part of Operation Twisted Traveler, ICE and FBI agents jointly conducted training for organizations in Cambodia involved in the effort to combat child sex tourism, including representatives from the CNP, local Cambodian law enforcement and several NGOs. The training covered all aspects of child sex tourism investigations, ranging from search and seizure procedures and surveillance techniques to the legal authorities contained in the PROTECT Act.

Child Trafficking Bill Receives Royal Assent

2010-06-30T10:26:00.001-04:00

Ottawa, ON: June 29, 2010 marks an historical event, with Bill C-268 receiving Royal Assent. This bill is an Act to Amend the Criminal Code (minimum sentence for offences involving trafficking of persons under the age of eighteen years). Bill C-268 was signed by Justice Rothstein and read by the Speaker of the Canadian Senate, giving the Bill Royal Assent by written declaration.

The Bill amends Canada’s Criminal Code by introducing a new human trafficking offence specifically addressing child traffickers. The new law will provide a minimum sentence of five years imprisonment for anyone convicted of trafficking a minor in Canada and a minimum of six years imprisonment for cases with aggravating factors.

Bill C-268 was introduced as a Private Member’s Bill to the House of Commons by Member of Parliament for Kildonan-St. Paul, Joy Smith on January 29, 2009. It passed a final vote in the House of Commons on September 30 of the same year with the overwhelming support of the Conservative, Liberal and NDP parties. Only the Bloc Quebecois and a few NDP MPs opposed it.

The Bill was then introduced to the Senate on October 1, 2010 and faced a final vote on June 17 of this year. A bill requires Royal Assent before it comes into force, which occurred on June 29, 2010.

“I am delighted by the strong support that Canadians have shown for the protection of our children,” commented MP Joy Smith. “Just before Canadians celebrate Canada Day on July 1st, Canadians also celebrate the passage of Bill C-268 into Canadian law. Canada is a proud country and stands firmly against those who exploit children.”

Bill C-268 is the first and only Private Members’ Bill to be passed by Parliament since the last election in 2008. The passing of Bill C-268 is even more significant since it amends the Criminal Code. Prior to this legislation, only 14 Private Members’ Bills containing Criminal Code amendments have been adopted by the Canadian Parliament since Confederation.

“This is an historic moment for all Canadians,” commented Mrs. Smith. “Today we have taken a strong stance against the modern version of slavery. I know that I speak for all Canadians when I say that our children are not for sale!”

There has been considerable support for Bill C-268 by a large number of ethnic, faith-based and law enforcement organizations. In addition, Mrs. Smith has reached out to all Canadian communities from coast to coast advising them of this barbaric crime. In doing so she received many petitions with tens of thousands of signatures of those who support her work.

In addition, people world wide have been calling on Canada to do more to fight human trafficking. The US State Department has identified Canada as a source, transit and destination country for human trafficking. Prior to Bill C-268, Canada was one of the few developed countries that did not enforce mandatory minimum sentences for trafficking children.

Abolish Slavery...In Canada

2010-06-28T09:51:00.000-04:00

Human trafficking exists in Canada. A national strategy does not. Bill C-268 was a victory, but we need to do more.

The treatment of human beings as commodities is a practice as ancient as it is appalling. For Canadians, perhaps this is the reason this modern form of slavery remains a foreign and misunderstood concept. In reality, it occurs within the country’s borders on a daily basis.

As the leaders of the world’s most powerful nations gathered in Canada for the G20 and G8 summits, this issue did not, unfortunately, appear on the agenda. However, some domestic progress occurred with the June 18 passage of Bill C-268, which will ensure a minimum of five years in jail for traffickers of children in Canada. The approval of this bill is a victory not only for the thousands of victims and potential victims of this crime, but also for Canada’s reputation and leadership role in the international community.

Bill C-268’s passage is all the more remarkable given the fractious nature of the 40th session of Parliament and the resultant low number of bills actually passed, as well as its status as a private member’s bill – such bills rarely receive assent.

The fact that this bill, championed by Joy Smith (Member of Parliament for Kildonan-St. Paul) successfully muscled its way through a dysfunctional Parliament is a testament to the urgency of this matter.

Human trafficking – as defined by the Government of Canada – is the “recruitment, transportation and/or harbouring of persons for the purpose of exploitation, typically for sexual exploitation or forced labour.”

According to the UN, the vast majority of human trafficking involves sexual exploitation, and the victims are almost always women and girls. Furthermore, on a global basis, one in five victims is a child, while 100 per cent of victims in Africa and the Mekong region are children.

Most traffickers, given their financial motivation, generally aim to transport victims into the U.S., with Canada often seen as an easy entry point. Victims are coerced by means of fraud and forced to engage in prostitution, pornography, and live sex shows.

In Canada, the RCMP estimates that between 800 and 1,200 people are trafficked through Canada each year; this activity is also responsible for the illegal arrival of between 8,000 and 16,000 people annually. And the toll of this crime is not restricted to the immediate victims: trafficking has a financial impact of up to $400 million per year, according to RCMP figures.

But while the international community is awakening to this egregious problem, government action remains at a decidedly preliminary stage. To this end, Bill C-268 amends the Criminal Code so that minimum sentences can be imposed upon people who are involved in trafficking persons under the age of 18.

Prior to the passage of Bill C-268, Canada was one of a few western nations that did not recognize human trafficking when it came time to prosecute offenders. This despite the fact that Canada is a signatory to the United Nations Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child pornography, and prostitution.

In 2008, Imani Nakpangi, who made over $350,000 through the trafficking of a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old girl, became the first person in Canada to be convicted of this offence.

But advocates say much more needs to be done at a national, institutional level. Specifically, MP Joy Smith, along with groups such as Canadians Against Human Trafficking and Women Against Slavery, is calling for a national strategy that would unify the provision of services at the provincial level. The strategy is aimed at helping the devastated victims to reassemble their lives. Despite Smith’s 2007 introduction of a motion to this effect in the House of Commons, and despite its passing by unanimous vote, a strategy is still not in place.

Descent Into Slavery, and a Ladder to Another Life

2010-06-23T10:53:00.000-04:00

He wore a satin suit onstage, so new that a tag was still fixed to the cuff. His 2-year-old daughter wiggled in his arms. The crowd cheered. Lifting his right hand to his lips, Jose Gutierrez seemed to blow a kiss to the audience. But it was more.

Mr. Gutierrez had gotten to the other side of slavery, climbing a ladder of second chances.

More than a decade ago, he was part of the nameless, unseen cast of a horror story. Lured from Mexico on promises of prosperity, he and 56 other people lived as prisoners in two row houses in Queens. By day, they sold key chains and miniature screwdriver kits in the subways, at airports, on roadsides. At night, they turned over every penny to the bosses of the houses.

All of the peddlers were deaf. Mr. Gutierrez, the youngest, had arrived in the United States at age 15, fluent only in Mexican Sign Language.

On Tuesday morning, 13 years after two of the deaf Mexican peddlers walked into a police station in Queens with a letter describing the conditions, Mr. Gutierrez was honored for his diligent work at a company that has cleaning contracts with federal agencies.

Mr. Gutierrez’s assignment: janitor at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

“I remembered playing with a car when I was a little boy, and seeing a picture of her,” he said. “When I found out that I was going to work there, it moved me. Thrilled me.”

There are, it turns out, second acts in American lives. Mr. Gutierrez leaves his home in Astoria shortly after 5 a.m., catches a ferry at 6:30, lands on the island 15 minutes later. He cleans bathrooms, empties trash, dusts a giant globe that shows the journeys of people to the United States.

His own odyssey began in 1995, when he heard from a friend about opportunities for deaf people in the United States. He was the seventh child in a family of eight, the only one who was deaf. “My friend’s father drove us to San Diego,” Mr. Gutierrez said. “I was very awkward. I didn’t know anything. We were supposed to go around and sell things. The money we collected we had to give to the boss.”

After a year in Los Angeles, he moved to a house in New York City that ran under the same terms, led by the Paoletti family, many of whom were also deaf. They would order a box of novelties, like miniature balls and bats, paying $75. The items would be attached to cards explaining that the seller was deaf. The peddlers would spend 12 to 16 hours a day in subway cars, dropping the trinkets in the laps of riders. Each box would bring in $485 in revenue. The bosses would swap bundles of single dollars at Atlantic City casinos for $100 bills, making the money easier to smuggle into Mexico, where it was banked.

Mr. Gutierrez depended entirely on the bosses for a bed and food. They took his money. “We were like slaves,” he said. “It was very frustrating. We couldn’t talk to the cops. It was heartbreaking.”

One day in July 1997, two of the peddlers went into the 115th Precinct station house in Queens, bringing a letter they had composed with help from a couple they had met at Newark Airport. “The police brought interpreters in to get the story told,” said Maria V. Pardo, a job counselor for the deaf with Fedcap Rehabilitation Services. The police found $35,000 in cash in one of the houses and 57 imprisoned peddlers. Federal prosecutors indicted 20 people on charges that included slavery and smuggling, and ultimately, they all pleaded guilty to some wrongdoing.

The peddlers, who were in the country illegally, were subject to deportation, but the administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani stepped in; the era of zero tolerance for illegal immigrants had not yet begun. They were put up in a motel by the city, and slowly found places to live, schools to attend, jobs to go to. “They were given special permission to work,” Ms. Pardo said. Nearly 40 people decided to stay in the United States.

Mr. Gutierrez, 17 at the time that the slavery ring was broken up, went to the Lexington School for the Deaf. “The support I got there was wonderful,” he said, and he also fell in love with another student, Christina Gonzalez, who was born in the United States. “I had no family here; her family has been so good to me.”

She pointed him to Fedcap, which provides training and employment for people with disabilities. In 2007, Fedcap sent him to work on Liberty and Ellis Islands under a janitorial services contract administered by AbilityOne, a federal program. He makes $20 an hour plus benefits, and now has a green card.

So on Tuesday, Mr. Gutierrez was brought back to receive a special honor at the Fedcap graduation ceremony.

With him onstage were Ms. Gonzalez and their daughter, Gloria. He lifted his fingers to his mouth, as if he were blowing a kiss. His audience knew better: it was a symbol from American Sign Language, repeated over and over.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”

2010 Trafficking in Persons Report

2010-06-14T13:34:00.000-04:00

Secretary Clinton (June 14, 2010): "The 10th annual Trafficking in Persons Report outlines the continuing challenges across the globe, including in the United States. The Report, for the first time, includes a ranking of the United States based on the same standards to which we hold other countries. The United States takes its first-ever ranking not as a reprieve but as a responsibility to strengthen global efforts against modern slavery, including those within America. This human rights abuse is universal, and no one should claim immunity from its reach or from the responsibility to confront it."

http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2010/index.htm

18 years for NJ pimp who 'enslaved' prostitutes

2010-05-21T09:15:00.001-04:00

JERSEY CITY, N.J. (AP) - May 19, 2010 (WPVI) -- A Jersey City pimp who prosecutors say enslaved his prostitutes and forced them to use drugs so he could control them has been sentenced to 18 years in state prison.

Allen "Prince" Brown, who pleaded guilty in April to racketeering and theft by extortion, must serve nearly 11 years before being eligible for parole under the sentence imposed Wednesday in state Superior Court.

Prosecutors say the 48-year-old Jersey City man ran a human trafficking ring that enslaved women and girls, some as young at 17, and forced them to be prostitutes.

And if they did not earn a daily quota, ranging from $500 to $1,000, prosecutors said the women were beaten, denied drugs or refused entry back into the homes where Brown housed them.

Steven Seagal sued for allegedly keeping sex slaves

2010-04-13T13:26:00.000-04:00

Steven Seagal sued for allegedly keeping sex slaves
April 12, 2010, 11:35 PM EST
By Josh Dickey
TheWrap.com

Steven Seagal is accused of hiring young women as personal attendants whose real job was to serve his strange and sometimes violent sexual desires, according to a civil lawsuit filed Monday in Los Angeles by a 23-year-old former model who describes her experience in harrowing detail.

The plaintiff, Kayden Nguyen, said she met the action star in February through an ad on Craigslist seeking an executive assistant and, after three interviews, was told to pack for a trip to New Orleans, where the A&E show "Steven Seagal Lawman" was taping.

When she arrived, the lawsuit says, she discovered that Seagal had been keeping two young female Russian "attendants" who were essentially on-call for sex -- 24-seven.

On that first night, Nguyen was ushered to a secluded house where Seagal was staying with his wife and the two young women. He then proceeded to treat Nguyen as his "sex toy" despite her complaints, the lawsuit says, responding to her terror as he fondled and manhandled her by saying, "Relax, we won't do anything special tonight ... I'll save that for another night.'"

Search: Seagal sex trafficing
View results for: Seagal sex trafficing Steven Seagal She complained the following morning to some of the other employees, assuming that they would deliver the message to Seagal. Hours later, the lawsuit says he assaulted her again, this time forcing her to consume "illegal pills" and inflicting sexual acts on her until she sobbed.

The following morning, when she confronted Seagal herself, he told her there had been a "misunderstanding"; but hours later, he assaulted her a third time, an attack that stopped only when she ran away.

The ordeal carried on for several days, and it wasn't until Feb. 28 -- the following Sunday -- that she was able to escape the situation.

The lawsuit says Nguyen told Seagal that she had to leave to meet with family members who would be suspicious if she didn't show up. Nonetheless, he told her not to leave the house and followed her with a gun equipped with a flashlight as she went out to a waiting cab, which sped away as she jumped in the front seat.

A message left by TheWrap with the action star's attorney, Stuart Rosenthal, was not immediately returned Monday. Messages left with A&E were also not immediately returned.

It was not clear why Kayden Nguyen chose to file a civil lawsuit instead of a criminal complaint. Messages left with her lawyers were not immediately returned Monday.

Nguyen's lawsuit claims that even after she got away, Seagal and his employees tried desperately to persuade her to return. When she escaped, she left behind "everything of value she owned," including car keys, her laptop, clothes, and "hundreds of dollars worth of makeup." She was told she would not get the items back until she signed an agreement stating she would not report the sexual attacks.

The lawsuit says Nguyen had accepted the job on Feb. 22, a Monday, and was sped in a limo to a waiting private jet. Her first indication that something was awry was when Seagal told her, as the plane was taking off, that his wife "wouldn't mind if we had a sexual relationship."

Nguyen's lawsuit said she could identify a "unique physiological reaction" that Seagal has to sexual arousal, which could be corroborated by the other "attendants." The suit did not specify what that reaction is.

The lawsuit alleges sexual harassment in violation of federal labor laws; illegal sex trafficking; retaliation; wrongful termination; and false representations about employment. Each of the six counts seeks in excess of $1 million in damages.

Frederick Douglass Quote

2010-04-12T11:13:00.001-04:00

When the true history of the antislavery cause shall be written, women will occupy a large space in its pages, for the cause of the slave has been peculiarly woman's cause." [Life and Times of Frederick Douglass , 1881

Child Slavery Found on West African Fairtrade Cocoa Farms

2010-04-12T10:38:00.001-04:00

Child slavery Found on West African Fairtrade cocoa farms
BBC Panorama has uncovered child slavery and child labour on Fairtrade certified cocoa farms in Ghana and Cote D’Ivoire that supply cocoa to Cadburys and Nestle.

The investigative news programme indentified trafficked children within the Kuapo Kokoo cooperative in Ghana, which supplies Fairtrade cocoa to Cadburys.

Panorama also uncovered child labour on farms of the Kavokiva cooperative in Ivory Coast, a Fairtrade cocoa supplier to Nestle. Together Ghana and Cote D’Ivoire countries account for 60 per cent of the global cocoa supply.

Fairtrade guarantees to pay farmers an amount above the world cocoa price to help ensure they receive a ‘living wage’. Fairtrade also pays a social premium to farmers, which is spent on projects that benefit the community.

However, the discovery of slavery on Fairtrade farms has raised serious concerns over the effectiveness of the Fairtrade approach in preventing child slavery.

Commenting on Panorama's findings Aidan McQuade, Director of Anti-Slavery International, said: “With one in ten chocolate bars now carrying the Fairtrade label, ethically motivated consumers have the understandable expectation that a Fairtrade product is free of forced and child labour.

“Slavery and child labour are not simply issues of poverty and no one should be so naive as to expect them to disappear simply disappear as wages rise. The eradication of child labour and child trafficking is a social and human rights challenge as well as an economic one, especially so when those in slavery belong to vulnerable minorities. Without care there is a danger that economic assistance to slavery using communities will simply reinforce the structure that sustain child and force labour already.

“The task of eradication is an imperative on all of us and will require some hard thinking and painful choices to attain. In initial conversations Fairtrade has shown an openness to engaging more systematically with these challenges and we await with hope renewed action to demonstrate their commitment to tackling these problems."

Bangladeshi Child Sex Slaves Force-Fed Bovine Steroids to Look Older

2010-04-06T19:36:00.001-04:00

Life is getting even more dangerous for the young girls enslaved in the many, massive brothels across Bangladesh, thanks to a disturbing and growing trend: force-feeding child trafficking victims a steroid used to fatten cattle. The long-term side affects of such drugs on humans are largely unknown, but the short-term effects range from dangerous to deadly.

By law in Bangladesh, any woman working in a brothel must be 18 years or older. But in practice, that guideline is practically laughable. For decades, Bangladeshi brothels have been filled with young girls, ranging from pre-pubescents to teens, who have been sold to the brothels are are held there as slaves. Some are sold by family members to work off a family debt, others have no where else to go and become indebted to the brothel for their food and housing. Brothels use so many children because they are cheaper to feed than adults, are less likely to run away, and are more easily financially exploited. But a brothel full of 11-year-olds will draw police attention, even in Bangladesh. What's a madam to do?

Enter, Oradexon. The Oradexon family of drugs was originally developed by farmers and the livestock industry to force cattle to produce more fleshy tissue that would sell for more money on the market. In Bangladesh, the drug is cheap and widely available. So some bright brothel owner had the idea: if it makes cattle bigger, why not the kids I enslave in my brothel. Could it make them look more like adults?

Turns out Oradexon is a pimp's dream come true. Not only will it force a pre-pubescent child to grow breasts and hips before her body is ready to, but Oradexon is highly, highly addictive for humans. Once hooked, getting off the drug sends users into painful withdrawal, including headaches, stomach pain, whole-body skin rashes. Not an appealing prospect for someone who relies on her body to make enough money to survive. So when pimps and brothel owners force kids to take Oradexon, not only do they make it harder for police to identify children in the brothels, they also increase the girls' dependency on them.

Used in proper doses under a physician's care, Oradexon can effectively treat a variety of ailments in humans. But the way it is taken by the girls in Bangladesh's brothels -- to force puberty to come, to enlarge breasts, or to make girls look "meatier" for their clients -- causes a host of serious health problems. Long-term use of it impairs the kidneys, increases the blood pressure, interferes with normal hormone production, and causes widespread swelling throughout the body. Girls that have been on the drug for several years often have painful lumps in their legs and mid-sections.

Spending your teen years in a brothel is a dangerous enough activity for a child, between the threat of violence, STDs, and inability to attend school. The idea that these girls are now forced to take dangerous drugs to hide their true ages is adding injury to injury. The government of Bangladesh needs to seriously investigate the ways Oradexon and related drugs are being used and take steps to prevent them from being forced on young girls enslaved in brothels. Because the comments about human beings being treated like cattle are, in this case, far too easy to make.

Man in U.S. child sex case held in Thunder Bay

2010-03-30T12:27:00.000-04:00

A French national is under arrest in Thunder Bay, Ont., suspected of trying to "buy" a five-year-old boy online in the United States for sexual purposes.

Patrick Molesti, 56, of Woodstock, Ga., faces a charge of sexual exploitation of children, along with extradition to the U.S.

Police in Georgia said they acted on an anonymous tip that someone had tried to use the internet to acquire a child. Reports say the accused had been hunted since March 18, when police searched his home.

Lt. Jay Baker of the Georgia Sheriff’s Office said it did not appear that a specific boy was targeted. Police also said child pornography was found on a personal computer.

Molesti was stopped in Thunder Bay on Friday night when the bus he was taking from Calgary to Montreal stopped to refuel.

Police detained him at the Greyhound terminal after a warrant was issued by the Canadian Border Service Agency.

Toronto Man Charged with Human Trafficking

2010-02-25T14:25:00.001-05:00

Police charged a Toronto man with human trafficking after a woman was forced to perform sex acts for drug money.

Acting on a tip, York Regional Police launched their investigation in December after arresting a man in Vaughan for an unrelated matter.

The 28-year-old woman was forced to “do sexual acts in order to obtain some money,” said Det.-Sgt. Henry Deruiter.

Investigators also alleged the woman was forced to help a man commit crimes.

Investigators were told there are at least a couple of other victims connected to the case. Officers want to find them.

“We don’t know where they are, GTA I’d say,” he said.

Mark Stewart, 49, faces many charges, including trafficking in persons, assault, and three counts of sexual assault.

Anyone with information is asked to call police at 1-866-876-5423, ext. 7640, or anonymously Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

Vancouver Olympics get an ‘F’ for failing to curb sex trafficking

2010-02-10T14:40:00.000-05:00

Canwest News Service - Vancouver Olympic Games organizers have received a failing grade for their efforts to curb sex trafficking into the city, a think-tank announced Tuesday.

The Citizens Summit Against Sex Slavery, a coalition of women’s groups, academics and politicians, gave the Vancouver Olympic organizing committee, the B.C. government and the federal government an “F” for “failing to make sure women and youth are secure against human trafficking during the 2010 Olympics.”

Benjamin Perrin, a law professor at the University of British Columbia specializing in human trafficking, said he knew of “dozens” of young women, mostly from major urban centres and native reserves, who were being sent to Vancouver to deal with an expected surge of tourists seeking prostitutes.

Spikes in prostitution often coincide with mass sporting events, said Perrin. He said the 2004 Summer Games in Athens and 2006 World Cup in Germany are just two recent summits that attracted fleets of sex-trade workers to meet the needs of a typically wealthy, male audience.

“I’m very disappointed to say we were expecting this,” said Perrin, pointing to recommendations his group made in 2007 to the RCMP and VANOC to prevent a surge in human trafficking before the Olympics.

“Fortunately, what is apparent today, is that a number of woman who have been brought to Vancouver for the purpose of being sold for sex during the Games by their traffickers have been rescued,” said Perrin. “How many more out there, who are going to be subject to exploitation, we just don’t know.”

Many of these cases, Perrin said, are abetted by the popularity of online classified websites, such as Craigslist, that feature “erotic services” listings.

The listings are anonymous, helping travellers from around the world set up appointments with prostitutes before they set foot in Vancouver.

In the U.S., customers must provide credit card information before responding to a post. However, that’s not the case in Canada, allowing a “virtual sex slave market to flourish outside the reach of police and intelligence services,” a release from the summit said.

Vancouver police aren’t planning any crackdown on prostitution during the Games, said Const. Lindsey Houghton.

"Street-related prostitution existed before the Games, it will exist during the Games and it will exist after," Houghton said. "Our enforcement around that will not be any different. We have a dedicated vice unit that works very closely with the girls and the guys . . . to ensure that they are safe."

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

Sex for sale is hardly sporting

2010-02-08T09:21:00.000-05:00

Sex for sale is hardly sporting
News that Canadian pimps have forced prostitutes into Vancouver to service tourists during the upcoming Olympics isn't the kind of commerce we expected as proud host of the Winter Games.

Human trafficking, the buying and selling of people against their will, is part of the reality for Vancouver as it prepares to open the Games. Damage control would have you think sex for sale at the Olympics is just free enterprise gone horny, with everyone cashing in on their own free will. Don't believe it.

A front page exposé in the Vancouver Province slapped the Olympics with slime last week, documenting the staggering increase in demand for prostitution in Vancouver and Whistler. And read between the lines on this advertisement posted on Craigslist: “New and young girls are welcome to our family. Take advantage of the Olympics to make a large sum of money.”

The John Howard Society compiled Canadian research and concluded “in Canada the age at which individuals begin prostituting is usually between 14 and 16 years.” There is not an adult among us who would believe it's a career any teenager had a choice in.

Spend any time with young girls who've lost a family and their support systems and you discover why prostitution is presented to them far more often than it is to young women from more healthy environments. Prostitution isn't a natural choice for women and no parent coaches their child to aspire it. The supply for the demand of paid sex must be coerced.

Along the way, some tell us they come to thrive in the “industry.” They call themselves sex workers; three prostitutes have launched a Charter challenge to make it legal to live off the avails of prostitution. If successful, it would make Canada a destination of sex for sale, and organized crime would be out scrambling for more girls to meet demand.

John Cassells is one who suspects he's lost women from his neighbourhood to sex on demand at the Games. He's a Toronto worker with Youth Unlimited who oversees staff and volunteers helping women leave prostitution.

Several women had warned him their pimps were going to be moving them to Vancouver, and as expected, they are now missing, says Mr. Cassells, citing it as a matter of business, not of choice.

“I would say the vast majority of the girls I know who have exited prostitution have told of being drawn into the sex trade by coercion and controlled by violence. The majority of women we work with speak of their own personal struggle to get out, and a sense of being trapped and forced,” he says.

That is why you will see a collection of human-rights activists, abolitionists and Christian advocates all spending time and energy trying to publicize the plight of those trafficked during the Olympics.

The Salvation Army has launched a high-gloss advertising blitz to deter sex traffickers and opened a Vancouver safe house. Academics and former prostitutes have created the campaign Buying Sex is Not A Sport, and did more than just irritate those who want to be selling sex. Teaching people that prostitution is still a dangerous, high-demand and high-risk erosion of equality rights in Canada has made them exceptionally unpopular with libertine voices.

Parliament has fallen silent on the issue, with two human trafficking bills dying because of prorogation. Bill C-45 and Bill C-268 would have put some teeth into the outrage many Canadians feel over the fact that criminals can sell vulnerable people while pocketing a profit.

Sex for sale is far too important an issue to leave to market forces or court rulings. It is a moral and social-policy issue that requires compassion toward the vulnerable and tough laws to deal with those who purchase sex. When something as wholesome as the Olympics can be violated this way, we dare remain silent no longer.

Winnepeg major centre for child sex trade: expert

2010-02-03T14:02:00.000-05:00

Winnipeg major centre for child sex trade: expert
Last Updated: Thursday, July 9, 2009 | 1:38 PM CT Comments38Recommend30.
CBC News
An activist against human trafficking has accused Winnipeg as being the worst among Canadian cities for selling children for sex.

And not only are the children standing on the streets, they are being sold online, said Prof. Benjamin Perrin from the University of British Columbia. He said he has found more than 300 advertisements for Winnipeg girls and women on the Craigslist website.

Perrin has notified Winnipeg police about the ads but has not been told whether an investigation is being conducted.

Perrin is in Winnipeg to speak this week at a conference on human trafficking. The issue has particular resonance given the discovery outside of Winnipeg last week of the body of 17-year-old Cherisse Houle.

'I've seen by far the most overt sales of children in this city of Winnipeg than I have anywhere else in Canada, and it's heartbreaking.'
—Benjamin Perrin, University of British ColumbiaSeveral sources close to the investigation and family told CBC News she was a chronic runaway and a sex-trade worker in the care of the provincial Child and Family Services (CFS) agency.

In an interview with CBC News, Perrin said he has been on rides with police in eight Canadian cities, including Winnipeg.

"I have to say, I've seen by far the most overt sales of children in this city of Winnipeg than I have anywhere else in Canada, and it's heartbreaking," Perrin said.

During a recent ride-along with Winnipeg police along Selkirk Avenue, he saw one girl whose age he estimated at 12 or 13, selling herself on the street. A man, presumed by Perrin to be the pimp, watched from half a block away.

Lack of shelter space in Winnipeg
Perrin believes a lack of resources, such as shelter space for aboriginal girls and teens, is a major part of the reason the child sex trade is able to thrive in Winnipeg. The city has only one shelter for aboriginal girls and teens.

"They have six beds and over the last several years they've had to turn away almost 150 aboriginal teenage girls and children who wanted their help," he said. "They had to turn them away [but for many] this is a last stop."

The conference runs Wednesday and Thursday. The Wednesday forum was put on by the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, whose grand chief, Ron Evans, said 400 children and youth are involved in the sex trade on Winnipeg streets each year, and the average age they begin the practice is 13.

"Seventy to 80 per cent of the children and youth who are being exploited are aboriginal, and about 85 to 90 per cent of those are female," he said. "It's astounding. And, of course, 72 per cent of those are children are in CFS."

A solution to the issue will only come from increased awareness and dialogue, Evans said.

"The solutions will come when people … become aware of how we all need to do something about it," he said.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2009/07/08/mb-human-trafficking-winnipeg.html#ixzz0eV8kHatW

German brothels raided in trafficking probe

2010-02-03T13:59:00.000-05:00

German authorities say they have searched around 600 brothels across the country in an effort to track down women who may have been smuggled from West Africa as part of an international human trafficking ring.

The Federal Criminal Police Office said Wednesday that Tuesday evening's raids turned up more than 100 women from West Africa and that there were indications that some were victims of human trafficking.

German investigators say the nationwide crackdown follows investigations that suggest a network of West Africans active in Germany and other European countries is involved in prostitution, human trafficking, passport forgery and other illegal activity.

About 63 per cent of the roughly 400,000 sex workers in Germany are migrants, the majority arriving from central and eastern Europe, according to 2008 figures from the European Network for HIV/STI Prevention and Health Promotion among Migrant Sex Workers, known by the acronym Tampep.

While prostitution in Germany is not illegal, migrants cannot obtain entry into Germany as a sex worker, meaning many who enter the country do so illegally.

This makes them more vulnerable to exploitation, Tampep said in their latest report on working conditions in the country.

Africa is the source of about 12 per cent of all migrant sex workers in Europe and accounts for about six per cent in Germany, according to Tampep.

Nigeria, Morocco, Cameroon, Sierra Leone and Algeria are the African countries most often cited by European officials as the countries of origin of migrant sex workers, some of whom are believed to have been brought into the countries through illegal means

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/02/03/germany-trafficking.html#ixzz0eV7maTQn

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/02/03/germany-trafficking.html#ixzz0eV7n2SQm

Haiti May Force Baptists Back to U.S. Group accused of smuggling orphans out of devastated country

2010-02-01T14:44:00.001-05:00

Officials in Haiti say they are talking with U.S. diplomats about whether 10 American Baptists arrested trying to take children out of the country should be sent to the United States for prosecution.

A lawyer representing the Americans said that nine of the 10 are being treated poorly while the 10th, a diabetic, was hospitalized after fainting.

Haiti's communications minister said the Americans might have to face justice in the United States because Haiti's court system has been crippled, and courthouses destroyed, by the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Dominican Republic Lawyer Jorge Puello said the Americans are crammed in a small room at Haiti's judicial police headquarters. He claims they have not been given adequate medical care or food.

Children taken to Dominican Republic
The Baptists are accused of taking 33 children out of the country without permission or documentation.

They were arrested Friday night trying to cross the border into the Dominican Republic in a bus and taken to judicial police headquarters in Port-au-Prince.

Members of the non-profit New Life Children's Refuge, most from Idaho, insist they were "just trying to do the right thing" by rescuing abandoned and traumatized children, said the group's spokeswoman, Laura Silsby.

Silsby, 40, said she hadn't been following news reports while in Haiti, and didn't think she needed Haitian permission to take them out of the country. She said her group had the best of intentions and paid no money for the children, who she said were brought to a Haitian pastor, whom she would not identify, by distant relatives.

Silsby admitted she had not obtained the proper Haitian documents for the children, whose names were written on pink tape on their shirts.

Haitian PM outraged
But Prime Minister Max Bellerive said Sunday he was outraged by the group's "illegal trafficking of children" in a country long afflicted by the scourge and by foreign meddling.

Haiti's overwhelmed government has halted all adoptions unless they were in motion before the quake amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to being seized and sold.

Without proper documents and concerted efforts to track down their parents, they could be forever separated from family members able and willing to care for them.

Bellerive's personal authorization is now required for the departure of any child.

"The instinct to swoop in and rescue children may be a natural impulse, but it cannot be the solution for the tens of thousands of children left vulnerable by the Haiti earthquake," said Deb Barry, of Save the Children, which wants a moratorium on new adoptions. "The possibility of a child being scooped up and mistakenly labelled an orphan in the chaotic aftermath of the disaster is incredibly high."

The children involved with the Baptist group were aged two months to 12 years old. They were taken to an orphanage run by Austrian-based SOS Children's Villages, where spokesman George Willeit said they arrived "very hungry, very thirsty."

'I am not an orphan'
A two- to three-month old baby was dehydrated and had to be hospitalized, he said. An orphanage worker held and caressed another, older baby, who was feverish and looked disoriented.

"One girl was crying, and saying, 'I am not an orphan. I still have my parents.' And she thought she was going on a summer camp or a boarding school or something like that," Willeit said.

Willeit also said some of the children are not orphans but have living parents, who were reportedly told that the children were going on an extended holiday from the post-quake misery.

The orphanage was working to reunite the children with their families, joining an effort organized by the Haitian government, the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other NGOs.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/02/01/haiti-orphans-baptists-100201.html#ixzz0eJcT4N0e

Island of Lost Children;Human traffickers find easy prey amid the rubble of Haiti

2010-01-26T21:06:00.000-05:00

Human traffickers find easy prey amid the rubble of Haiti
by Nicolette Grams

Island of Lost Children

In Haiti’s unstable post-quake atmosphere, at least one industry is poised to flourish. For those who buy and sell children for sex and cheap labor, Haiti is ripe with opportunity.

When the earthquake struck the impoverished island country last Tuesday afternoon, human traffickers suddenly gained access to a new population of displaced children. With parents dead, government offices demolished, and international aid organizations struggling to meet life-or-death demands, these kidnappers are in a unique position to snatch children with very little interference.

In today’s world, the twin causes of human slavery—poverty and vulnerability—increase exponentially after natural disasters. When the tsunami hit Indonesia in 2004, trafficking gangs moved quickly, seizing children and selling them as prostitutes in nearby Malaysia and Jakarta. In 2008, after floods devastated the Indian state of Bihar, groups of children were lured out of relief camps and sold to brothels across the nation.

I’ve seen many such stories up close. For the past three years, I’ve worked in India for International Justice Mission (IJM), a human rights agency with twelve offices around the world. Rescuing victims of slavery and sexual exploitation are our specialties, and natural disasters unfailingly bring us new business. One of my first cases dealt with a widowed mother and her six children who had been trafficked after a drought destroyed their livelihood. A local kiln owner, who was in the business of offering good jobs to drought-affected villagers, had approached them with an opportunity. The desperate widow took the bait and found herself and her children forced into slavery at a brick kiln with no hope of escape. The widow was subjected to violent physical abuse and raped repeatedly by the owner and his cronies.

In Haiti, as in India, human trafficking is a problem at the best of times. Even without the pandemonium unleashed by a 7.0 earthquake, an estimated quarter-million Haitian children are trafficked within the country each year. These slaves, known as restavecs, are typically sold or given away to new families by their own impoverished parents. Physical and sexual abuse is common for restavecs. Many owners use the girls as in-house prostitutes, sending them to live on the street if they become pregnant.

Not all of these trafficked children end up as domestic slaves within Haiti—plenty of others are promised work in the Dominican Republic but are instead sold to work in agricultural fields or brothels across the border. Poor children who escape a life in bondage most often end up in street gangs; if they are fortunate, they may be accepted into overcrowded orphanages.

In some cases, countries with trafficking problems have been able to rally around their children after natural disasters. After the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, an article from The Guardian reported stories of mysterious “relatives” showing up to take children from their hospital beds—a friendly male stranger, a never-before-seen aunt in an orange shawl. Doctors and medical staff knew exactly what these adults were after: earlier that same year, 400 Pakistani minors had been rescued from the United Arab Emirates, where they’d been enslaved as camel jockeys during the racing season. The hospital protected its young patients, refusing to turn them over to any adult without legal documentation. After several thwarted kidnapping attempts, The Guardian reported, a policewoman was guarding the doors of Islamabad’s largest hospital and its 960 hospital beds were under constant supervision.

Such a concerted effort appears unlikely, if not impossible, in Haiti today. Keeping an eye out for suspicious strangers would seem to be the least of the nation’s problems. With most of Haiti’s hospitals reduced to piles of rubble, aid groups like Doctors Without Borders are struggling to set up inflatable care centers in parking lots. Prisoners are escaping from their destroyed cells, and the riots surrounding food trucks have stretched police forces to their limits.

Meanwhile, an entirely new chunk of Haiti’s population has become homeless over night. Even with aid pouring in from around the world, essential resources like food and medicine are enormously scarce on the streets of Haiti. But for predators looking for boys and girls to sell for labor and sex, Haiti is the right place to be.

Until earlier this month, Nicolette Grams worked with International Justice Mission in Chennai, India, as head of the communications department. She lives in India.

Ottawa Police Arrest 12 People in Prostitution Sweep in Centretown and Vanier

2010-01-23T16:09:00.004-05:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, January 18, 2010 2:15 pm

(Ottawa)–In an ongoing effort to deal with community identified prostitution-related problems, the Ottawa Police Service conducted a two day prostitution sweep in Centertown and Vanier on January 16 and 17, 2010.

A total of twelve people were arrested: five males and seven females. Two of the males were referred to the “John school” pre-charge diversion program. “John School” is a project which uses a restorative justice approach to deal with the effects of prostitution within our communities and focuses on education.

The remaining ten people were charged with a variety of offenses including Communicating for the purpose of prostitution, Mischief, Possession of drugs and Breaches of previous forms of judiciary release.

Another two males were provided formal warnings for their behavior in the form of a Community Safety Letter.

The Ottawa Police Service conducts prostitution sweeps throughout the year and will continue to make this a priority when developing enforcement strategies.

-30-

CONTACT:

Sergeant Jim Elves, Central East Neighbourhood Office

Telephone: (613)236-1222, ext. 5389

Ottawa Police Service - Service de police d'Ottawa

www.ottawapolice.ca

Rapha House

2010-01-06T13:20:00.002-05:00

Rapha House rescues girls and children who have been sexually exploited and helps them to heal and build their lives.

Lack of Law puts Minors at Risk in Hawaii

2009-12-12T08:53:00.000-05:00

Marcus X Arrington's victim was only 16-years-old when he allegedly forced her into prostitution.

While she can't be named because she is a minor, her story fits the profile of many others. She ran away from home hoping to escape its problems. Arrington allegedly promised to help but instead brandished a handgun and forced her to work for him.

The girl's services were advertised on Craigslist. The affidavit she later filed with police says that posting was answered six to eight times a day during a two-week period earning Arrington between $6,000 and $8,000. To keep her in compliance, she says she was beaten and sexually assaulted by her captor.

In most U.S. states, these charges would constitute human trafficking. Through this fast-growing business, people are recruited and haboured for the purpose of exploitation. Victims are forced or coerced into activities like sex work. And, while many associate trafficking with smuggling people across transnational borders, the practice often involves citizens lured within their own borders.

But, Hawaii is one of eight states without a human trafficking law. If this were New York, Arrington would face up to 25 years in jail for this felony offense. Instead, he is charged with promoting prostitution, a crime that can be classed as a misdemeanor and carries a very broad sentence ranging from one day and ten years.

While federal human trafficking laws exist, these cases can take two years to build and authorities largely focus on large-scale rings. Experts say traffickers in Hawaii end up receiving a slap on the wrist if anything.

"It's too huge for federal law to regulate. Logistically, it's impossible," says Kathryn Xian of the Pacific Alliance to Stop Slavery. "They are not the ones who are every day in the streets. That's state police patrol."

Children are particularly vulnerable to the trafficking business which generates billions of dollars in profit each year and is the second largest criminal industry in the world. While numbers are hard to find, it's estimated between 100,000 and 300,000 children in America are victims.

According to the Polaris Project, the average age of entry into prostitution in the U.S. is between 12 and 13. Many are runaways who are attracted to a pimp's promise of money and affection before it quickly turns to forced prostitution.

That's something Xian says is rampant in Hawaii due to the state's less stringent laws and abundance of wealthy travelers.

"The traffickers are mobile and crafty. And, the price is lower on the mainland. You can charge $500 per hour in Hawaii because of the clientele," she explains. "Now we have significant numbers of 24-hour massage parlours popping up in droves without any ability to be regulated."

Police in Hawaii must rely on promoting prostitution to prosecute offenders. Charges often come through undercover operations where police pose as Johns and answer ads on Craigslist. Traffickers are charged based on their arranging the meeting. But, because the girl is actually the one who makes the transaction, she too is arrested.

This means the enslaved girl is actually being charged with the same crime as her trafficker.

Xian says New York State's law is more comprehensive. By specifically naming sex trafficking as an offense, they created a separate law for abusers with sentences of up to 25 years in jail. Previously, offenders faced two and a half to seven years. It also required victims receive rehabilitation services.

Trafficking is still difficult to prove. It's often hidden from public view and the violence under which victims live too often prevents them from coming forward. But, Xian says a human trafficking bill would give Hawaiian police a chance at distinguishing between trafficker and victim - and getting victims the help they need.

"Everyone is against human trafficking and slavery," says Xian. "To affectively address it, we need to pass our own laws."

Teenage Sex For Sale Documentary

2009-11-26T09:53:00.001-05:00

A Panorama investigation has uncovered how girls, sometimes as young as 12, are being groomed for prostitution by gangs on the streets of Britain. In what is often a hidden crime, gangs are targeting young girls in a process that starts as adolescent fun but soon leads to abuse, drug addiction and prostitution.
The girls are often flattered by the attentions of older boys and like the idea of having an older boyfriend, but the initial friendship can soon turn ugly. We spoke to “Jane” who got caught up with one of the gangs. She told Panorama that it all started when she met a group of boys in the local town centre:
“The grooming starts when you meet them and they’re nice to you and take you for McDonalds and buy you cigarettes. I was flattered by it at first cos older boys were interested in you, which at 13 is nice.” But things took a sinister turn when the boys brought their friends, who were older, and Jane realised she’d been passed on. The abuse started with Jane being held down by two of the men while another raped her.
She was too scared to tell her parents and within weeks she was trapped and pimped, being forced to have unprotected sex with a succession of men day after day. She explains how the gang introduced her to drugs, building up a debt that had to be worked off by sleeping with lots of different men. Although the gang was making money from Jane, she never saw a penny of it. (Excerpt from bbc.co.uk)

Officers discover sex-slave cult

2009-11-12T13:51:00.000-05:00

Officers discover sex-slave cult
A sex slavery cult based on a series of 1960s science fiction novels has been uncovered by police in Darlington.
Durham Police discovered the bizarre sect after raiding a home in the area, after receiving complaints that a woman was being held against her will.

But a spokesman said the Canadian was a willing participant and the other people involved were consenting adults.

The group, called Kaotians, follow the Chronicles of Gor novels which depict a society where women are dominated.

The 29-year-old woman is said to have voluntarily attended the sect after finding out about it over the internet.

She later contacted a friend in United States, who then contacted the police, saying she wanted to leave but couldn't as she had burnt her passport and return ticket.

But a police spokesman said upon arriving at the premises they did not find any evidence of "criminal offences".

'Own choice'

Police also investigated claims by a father in Essex his 18-year-old son had joined the sect. However police also found the teenager was at the property voluntarily and they had no grounds to get involved.

“ We don't hurt anyone, we don't damage anyone, everyone's consensual ”
Lee Thompson
Lee Thompson, 31, says he is the "master" who trains the slaves at the Darlington address.

He said the women who act as slaves "do so by their own choice".

"We're just a group of people that live a different lifestyle, I mean there's nothing wrong with that," he told BBC News.

"We don't hurt anyone, we don't damage anyone, everyone's consensual."

Members of the group based their lives on "a dominant submissive point of view", he said.

"It's one thing that everyone's missed out on so far is, even in our organisation, if that's what you want to call it, women can be free and they can be dominant, we don't stop that," he added.

"But the majority of women in our organisation are obviously slaves because women have a submissive streak in them."

Mr Thompson says up to 350 followers regularly meet in pubs and clubs around the North East, in an area from Berwick to York.

Kaotians are a splinter group of the Goreans, which base their beliefs on novels written by American university professor John Norman.

The books are set on the quasi-medieval planet of Gor, which has a caste system and uses women as slaves.

There are an estimated 25,000 Goreans worldwide.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/4996410.stm

Published: 2006/05/19 11:03:34 GMT

© BBC MMIX

sais / 28 - Inside Higher Ed

2009-10-14T13:49:00.001-04:00

sais / 28 - Inside Higher Ed

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International Trafficking in Women to the United States: a Contemporary Manifestation of Slavery and Organized Crime

2009-10-05T14:49:00.002-04:00

Center for the Study of Intelligence
DCI Exceptional Intelligence Analyst Program
An Intelligence Monograph (80 Pages)
www.cia.gov

CIA World Factbook (Links to Tier 2 Watch List Countries)

2009-10-05T14:45:00.001-04:00

Trafficking in persons is modern-day slavery, involving victims who are forced, defrauded, or coerced into labor or sexual exploitation. The International Labor Organization (ILO), the UN agency charged with addressing labor standards, employment, and social protection issues, estimates that 12.3 million people worldwide are enslaved in forced labor, bonded labor, forced child labor, sexual servitude, and involuntary servitude at any given time. Human trafficking is a multi-dimensional threat, depriving people of their human rights and freedoms, risking global health, promoting social breakdown, inhibiting development by depriving countries of their human capital, and helping fuel the growth of organized crime. In 2000, the US Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), reauthorized in 2003 and 2005, which provides tools for the US to combat trafficking in persons, both domestically and abroad. One of the law's key components is the creation of the US Department of State's annual Trafficking in Persons Report, which assesses the government response (i.e., the current situation) in some 150 countries with a significant number of victims trafficked across their borders who are recruited, harbored, transported, provided, or obtained for forced labor or sexual exploitation. Countries in the annual report are rated in three tiers, based on government efforts to combat trafficking. The countries identified in this entry are those listed in the 2008 Trafficking in Persons Report as Tier 2 Watch List or Tier 3 based on the following tier rating definitions:
Tier 2 Watch List countries do not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but are making significant efforts to do so, and meet one of the following criteria:
1. they display high or significantly increasing number of victims,
2. they have failed to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat trafficking in persons, or,
3. they have committed to take action over the next year.
Tier 3 countries neither satisfy the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking nor demonstrate a significant effort to do so. Countries in this tier are subject to potential non-humanitarian and non-trade sanctions.

Human Trafficking Into and Within the United States: A Review of the Literature

2009-10-05T06:56:00.000-04:00

ABSTRACT:
This comprehensive review of current literature on human trafficking into and within the United States focuses on surveying what the social science or other literature has found about the issues of identifying and effectively serving trafficking victims. A more specific focus concerns the phenomenon of “domestic trafficking” (trafficking involving U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents, often within the U.S.), the impact on domestic youth, and the availability and/or effectiveness of services for these victims.

Former Blue Springs pair admit guilt in case of 12-year-old dominatrix

2009-09-25T09:42:00.000-04:00

Former Blue Springs pair admit guilt in case of 12-year-old dominatrix
By TONY RIZZO
The Kansas City Star

A former area woman and the man she lived with in Blue Springs pleaded guilty this morning in federal court to the sex trafficking of the woman’s daughter.
Todd Barkau, 37, started training the daughter at age 12 to be a dominatrix and engage in sado-masochistic sex acts. He pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Kansas City to commercial sex trafficking of a minor. He will be sentenced to 25 years in prison as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors.
The girl’s 45-year-old mother pleaded guilty to the same charge. Her plea agreement calls for a 15-year sentence.
The Star is not naming her to protect the identity of her daughter. The mother was the first parent in the United States to be charged with the commercial sex trafficking of their child in a human trafficking case, prosecutors said at the time charges were filed last year
The couple formerly lived in Blue Springs.
When the girl was 12, Barkau began training her to engage in acts of sexual bondage, domination, sadism and masochism with him and others, according to prosecutors. When the victim was 14, Barkau set up an online business, marketing her as Mistress Alisha in both online and in-person sexual encounters.
The girl’s mother assisted in the business and received financial compensation, prosecutors said.
The victim, who is now 22, attended the plea hearings and told the judge that she approved of the plea agreements.
Barkau and the woman will be sentenced after pre-sentence investigations are completed.

Sarah Brown: A Changing Tide of Opinion for Girls and Women

2009-09-24T22:59:00.001-04:00

Sarah Brown: A Changing Tide of Opinion for Girls and Women

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Three busted for human trafficking

2009-09-21T09:24:00.000-04:00

VICTORIA HANDYSIDES
METRO EDMONTON
September 11, 2009 5:05 a.m.
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Three rescued victims of “modern-day slavery” are living in safehouses, freed from a life of involuntary prostitution at a west-end massage parlour. “They were very withdrawn. I don’t want to compare it to an animal, but they were like scared dogs. They clung to each other,” Edmonton Police vice Cst. Dave Schenning said, describing the women investigators discovered upon raiding Sachi Spa (17519 – 100 Avenue) last week. “All I could see was fear.”Three people face a combined 20 human trafficking-related charges — the first of their kind ever laid in Western Canada.Investigators say the women, originally from China and Fiji, were lured to Edmonton by ads in foreign newspapers, offering promising careers in the massage trade. “They ate, drank and slept in the room they worked in,” Schenning said, adding the women were threatened their families would be told if they ever left. “Major” psychological manipulation and fear kept the 21- to 24-year-old women working as prostitutes, he said, adding cultural association may have made them fearful toward police. “We had to work hard to assure them we were there to help and that they’re the victims, not in trouble.” Investigators say the bust scratches the surface of the global human trafficking pandemic. Canadian laws addressing the crime did not exist until 2005. Since, only a handful of charges have been laid nationally. Mei Fang Chen, 33, Xiu Zheng Chen, 32, and Qui Wang, 41, were charged with offences including trafficking persons and living off the avails of prostitution.

Yemeni girl, 12, dies in painful childbirth

2009-09-20T13:15:00.000-04:00

By Mohammed JamjoomCNN

AMMAN, Jordan (CNN) -- A 12-year-old Yemeni girl, who was forced into marriage, died during a painful childbirth that also killed her baby, a children's rights group said Monday.
Fawziya Ammodi struggled for three days in labor, before dying of severe bleeding at a hospital on Friday, said the Seyaj Organization for the Protection of Children.
"Although the cause of her death was lack of medical care, the real case was the lack of education in Yemen and the fact that child marriages keep happening," said Seyaj President Ahmed al-Qureshi.

Born into an impoverished family in Hodeidah, Fawziya was forced to drop out of school and married off to a 24-year-old man last year, al-Qureshi said.
Child brides are commonplace in Yemen, especially in the Red Sea Coast where tribal customs hold sway. Hodeidah is the fourth largest city in Yemen and an important port.
More than half of all young Yemeni girls are married off before the age of 18 -- many times to older men, some with more than one wife, a study by Sanaa University found.

While it was not immediately known why Fawziya's parents married her off, the reasons vary. Sometimes, financially-strapped parents offer up their daughters for hefty dowries.
Marriage means the girls are no longer a financial or moral burden to their parents. And often, parents will extract a promise from the husband to wait until the girl is older to consummate the marriage.

Children's organization UNICEF issued a statement Monday saying: "Child marriages violate the rights of children in the most deplorable way. The younger the girl is when she becomes pregnant, the greater the health risks for her and her baby.

"Girls who give birth before the age of 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women in their 20s. Child marriage denies girls of their childhood, deprives them of an education and robs them of their innocence."

"More must be done to address the underlying causes in order to prevent tragic deaths like those of 12-year-old Fawziya and her baby," the statement added.
The issue of Yemeni child brides came to the forefront in 2008 with 10-year-old Nujood Ali.
She was pulled out of school and married to a man who beat and raped her within weeks of the ceremony.

To escape, Nujood hailed a taxi -- the first time in her life -- to get across town to the central courthouse where she sat on a bench and demanded to see a judge.
After a well-publicized trial, she was granted a divorce.

The Yemeni parliament tried in February to pass a law, setting the minimum marriage age at 17. But the measure has not reached the president because many parliamentarians argued it violates sharia, or Islamic law, which does not stipulate a minimum age.

Turkish police rescue 9 duped reality TV hopefuls

2009-09-10T12:30:00.001-04:00

Turkish military police stormed an Istanbul villa to rescue nine women held captive for about two months after being duped into believing they were reality show contestants, officials said Thursday.
The women were rescued on Monday in the villa in Riva, a summer resort on the outskirts of Istanbul, a spokesman for the military police confirmed.
The women were led to believe they were being filmed for a Big Brother-type reality television show that would be aired on a major Turkish television station. But instead, their naked images were sold on the internet, according to the Dogan news agency and the HaberTurk newspaper.
They had to sign a contract that stipulated that they could have no contact with their families or the outside world and would have to pay a $23,000 fine if they left the show before two months.
A mother of one of the women told Dogan they were not abused or harassed sexually. They were told, however, to fight each other, wear bikinis and dance by villa's pool.
Police said they stormed the villa after some family members complained that they were being prevented from contacting the women.With files from The Associated Press

Turkish police rescue 9 duped reality TV hopefuls

2009-09-10T12:30:00.000-04:00

Chipotle Reaches Agreement with Florida Tomato Grower to Improve Wages for Farm Workers

2009-09-09T20:04:00.000-04:00

Sudanese 'trousers woman' jailed

2009-09-07T12:51:00.000-04:00

A Sudanese woman has been jailed for a month after refusing to pay a fine for "dressing indecently" by wearing trousers, her lawyers say.

Lubna Ahmed Hussein did not want to "give the verdict any legitimacy" by paying the fine of about $200 (£122), her lawyer, Nabil Adib, told the BBC.

Ms Hussein, a journalist in her 30s, could have been given up to 40 lashes.

Before the verdict, she had said she wanted her trial to become a test case for women's rights, correspondents say.

Ms Hussein had resigned from her job at the UN, which would have given her immunity.

"She will stay in prison, she doesn't want to give the verdict any legitimacy," said Mr Adib.

"She thinks she was unfairly tried and convicted, and was not given a proper chance to put her defence case."

Mr Adib said Ms Hussein would appeal to both the Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court.

Ms Hussein wore loose trousers to the hearing in Khartoum

Kamal Omar, another of Ms Hussein's lawyers, told the AFP news agency his client had been taken to the women's prison in Omdurman.

The BBC's James Copnall, at the court in Khartoum, says Ms Hussein had previously said she was determined not to pay the fine but her lawyers had been trying to convince her to do so.

The announcement of the fine for Ms Hussein came shortly after the trial resumed on Monday.

The journalist - who appeared in the same loose green trousers, top and shawl she was wearing when arrested - was found guilty of wearing "indecent clothing" under article 152 of Sudanese criminal law.

Earlier, at least 40 protesters were held by police outside the courthouse in the Sudanese capital. Some of them were women reportedly wearing trousers in support for Ms Hussein.

Our correspondent saw one woman being hit eight or nine times by police with truncheons.

All the protesters were later released on bail.

'Nothing wrong'

Ms Hussein's supporters were heckled by Islamists, who tore up some of the women's homemade signs, says our correspondent.

The presence of diplomats and human rights activists inside the court, and the protests outside, show that the trial has become a test case for women's rights in Sudan, he adds.

Ms Hussein was arrested in July together with 12 other women who were wearing trousers.

During the trial she argued that she had done nothing wrong under Sudan's indecency law.

On Friday, the London-based human rights group Amnesty International called on Khartoum to withdraw the charges against Ms Hussein and repeal the law used to justify flogging as a penalty for "indecent" dress.

In a column published in the UK's Guardian newspaper on Friday, Ms Hussein wrote: "When I think of my trial, I pray that my daughters will never live in fear of these police... We will only be secure once the police protect us and these laws are repealed."

Americans Enslaved

2009-09-04T15:45:00.000-04:00

Watch CBS Videos Online

Sex-tourism operation nets three, Justice Department says

2009-08-31T21:22:00.001-04:00

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Three men charged with sexually exploiting Cambodian children are being brought back to the United States to face prosecution, the Justice Department announced Monday.
The men are the first to be charged under an international law enforcement initiative specifically targeting Americans traveling to Cambodia for the purpose of sexually abusing children.
The initiative, Operation Twisted Traveler, is an effort by the Justice Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to crack down on sex tourism.
"The men charged in this investigation apparently thought they could pursue their abhorrent desires by leaving the United States to prey on children in another country, but they were sadly mistaken," U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien said in a statement.
"We are now working closer than ever with officials in other nations and concerned private parties to take every effort we can to identify and prosecute sex tourists, as well as to provide every protection we can to the world's children."
Ronald Boyajian, 49, Erik Peeters, 41, and Jack Sporich, 75, are each charged with international travel and engaging in sexual contact with minors, a charge carrying a maximum prison sentence of 30 years, according to the Justice Department.
They are slated to make their first appearances in federal court on Tuesday, the Justice Department indicated in a news release.
The defendants are charged with international travel and engaging in sexual contact with minors, a charge carrying a maximum prison sentence of 30 years for each of their alleged victims, according to the department.
They are charged under the federal Protect Act, enacted six years ago to strengthen federal laws relating to predatory crimes against children outside U.S. borders, the department added.
The three defendants were apprehended, according to Immigration and Customs officials, as a result of information provided by the human rights organization International Justice Mission and the group Action Pour les Enfants, which combats child exploitation.
All three men have been previously convicted of sex offenses in the United States, the Justice Department noted in its statement.
"These types of cases are disturbing not only because young, defenseless children were victimized in unspeakable ways but also because the defendants went to such lengths to engage in their dark activities overseas," O'Brien said at a news conference.
He highlighted the case against Peeters, who was convicted on child molestation charges in 1990.
"Our case against Mr. Peeters outlines evidence of him allegedly molesting Cambodian boys, paying them small amounts of money -- $5 to $10 -- and possibly taking digital pictures of his young victims while they were naked," O'Brien noted.
He said Peeters molested at least three boys in Cambodia over the course of several months. One of the boys was 12 years old when the abuse is said to have started.
Boyajian is said to have "engaged in sexual activity with a 10-year-old Vietnamese girl in an area outside Phnom Penh frequented by child sex tourists known as 'Kilo 11,' " the Justice Department statement said.
Sporich, according to Action Pour les Enfants investigators cited in the government's criminal complaint, repeatedly hosted three Cambodian boys at a residence outside the city of Siem Reap. The complaint states that Sporich "was known to drive his motor bike through the neighborhoods while dropping Cambodian (money) on the street in order to meet kids."
The new charges "clearly demonstrate to the Cambodian people that the United States will not tolerate this type of abuse," said Carol Rodley, the American ambassador to Cambodia.
"These cases not only signal to the Cambodian victims our commitment to justice, but they will also act as a powerful deterrent for those individuals who are contemplating traveling to Cambodia to engage in illegal sexual activity with minors."
The International Labor Organization estimates that at least 12.3 million adults and children are victims of forced labor, bonded labor and sex slavery each year.
Cambodia is one of several countries recently added to a U.S. "watch list" because of what a State Department report calls a worsening human trafficking record in that country.

Tanzania buries school fire dead

2009-08-29T14:59:00.000-04:00

Hundreds of mourners have attended the mass burial in Tanzania for 12 girls who died in a dormitory fire.

The BBC's Josephat Mwanzi said the bodies, which were burned beyond recognition, were put in separate graves with numbered markers.

Their names will be added to the graves in school in Idodi, 460km (285 miles) west of Dar es Salaam, when the results of DNA tests are known.

The fire is thought to have been caused by a student reading by candlelight.

Police say it probably set light to a mosquito net and the flames spread through the dormitory at Idodi Secondary School on Saturday night.

Tears

Our reporter says parents and pupils gathered around the graves to see the coffins being lowered.

He said it was heartbreaking to watch and many of the mourners were in tears.

Afterwards, some of the pupils said the girls' dormitories at the school were often locked at night to stop them going out.

Fourteen girls who were seriously injured in the fire are being treated at a hospital in nearby Iringa town.

Nine others are being looked after in Idodi village - and at least two of them attended the funeral.

After the funeral, the pupils were sent home for three weeks so a new dormitory can be built.

Officials had earlier said the dead would be buried in a mass grave because their bodies had been burnt beyond recognition.

Scores of schoolchildren have died in similar incidents in neighbouring Kenya and Uganda in recent years.

Mali protest against women's law

2009-08-29T13:31:00.001-04:00

Women were among the crowd at the rally at Bamako's main stadium

Tens of thousands of people in Mali's capital, Bamako, have been protesting against a new law which gives women equal rights in marriage.

The law, passed earlier this month, also strengthens inheritance rights for women and children born out of wedlock.

The head of a Muslim women's association says only a minority of Malian women - "the intellectuals" as she put it - supports the law.

Several other protests have taken place in other parts of the country.

The law was adopted by the Malian parliament at the beginning of August, and has yet to be signed into force by the president.

One of the most contentious issues in the new legislation is that women are no longer required to obey their husbands.

Hadja Sapiato Dembele of the National Union of Muslim Women's Associations said the law goes against Islamic principles.

"We have to stick to the Koran," Ms Dembele told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme. "A man must protect his wife, a wife must obey her husband."

"It's a tiny minority of women here that wants this new law - the intellectuals. The poor and illiterate women of this country - the real Muslims - are against it," she added.

Indian TV's Child Bride

2009-08-24T22:35:00.000-04:00

The Importance of Education

2009-08-23T21:04:00.001-04:00

I have just finished reading Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin's book Three Cups of Tea and the New York Times article The Women's Crusade (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html?_r=1&em). Both discuss the importance of education in combating the world's greatest ills--poverty, gender discrimination, slavery, terrorism. Both urge that educating the poorest of the poor is the solution to these problems. And, now, I found myself pondering the mission that we have set out for ourselves here at Women Against Slavery.

When we first began our group, I think we all believed that "consciousness raising" was a good start (just a start, with greater work to come). I know we would like to find a way to do the hands on work of freeing slaves, but these recent readings have filled me with the conviction that there is important work to be done just within the confines of consciousness raising.

Before we can even hope to bring education to the poorest of the poor, before we can use that education to uplift and free, we have to make people in developed countries aware of the problems and foster in them concern for the causes. This, too, begins with education.

So often, those of us in developed countries believe that we do not need more education. After all, a high school education is more than most citizens of the world could ever dream of obtaining. And, isn't having a college education really going above and beyond the learning that is necessary for life? Many abandon education after high school and most of the remaining do so after college. But, did any of us learn about modern day slavery in high school? Even with a degree in sociology with a focus on gender issues, I never heard about it in college either.

If we want to end slavery, then we must start by educating ourselves so that we may lift the veil of ignorance and see clearly the work that needs to be done.

This is why I am so proud of the work that Women Against Slavery is doing right now. To educate ourselves, to educate those around us, is the necessary first step to educating those less fortunate. We are building the foundation required to end poverty and to abolish slavery.

Row over Afghan wife-starving law

2009-08-23T15:31:00.001-04:00

Row over Afghan wife-starving law
By Sarah Rainsford
BBC News

An Afghan bill allowing a husband to starve his wife if she refuses to have sex has been published in the official gazette and become law.

The original bill caused outrage earlier this year, forcing Afghan President Hamid Karzai to withdraw it.

But critics say the amended version of the law remains highly repressive.

They accuse Mr Karzai of selling out Afghan women for the sake of conservative Shia support at next week's presidential election.

The law governs family life for Afghanistan's Shia minority.

Sexual demands

The original version obliged Shia women to have sex with their husbands every four days at a minimum, and it effectively condoned rape by removing the need for consent to sex within marriage.

Western leaders and Afghan women's groups were united in condemning an apparent reversal of key freedoms won by women after the fall of the Taliban.

Now an amended version of the same bill has passed quietly into law with the apparent approval of President Karzai.

Just ahead of this Thursday's Afghan presidential election, human rights groups suggest the timing is no accident.

"There was a review process - Karzai came under huge pressure from all over the world to amend this law, but many of the most oppressive laws remain," Rachel Reid, the Human Rights Watch representative in Kabul, told the BBC.

"What matters more to Karzai is the support of fundamentalists and hardliners here in Afghanistan whose support he thinks he needs in the elections."

Women's groups say its new wording still violates the principle of equality that is enshrined in their constitution.

It allows a man to withhold food from his wife if she refuses his sexual demands; a woman must get her husband's permission to work; and fathers and grandfathers are given exclusive custody of children.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/8204207.stm

Published: 2009/08/16 15:28:28 GMT

© BBC MMIX

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Afghan women fight on for rights

2009-08-23T15:18:00.000-04:00

Afghan women fight on for rights

By Jane Corbin
Reporter, BBC Panorama

The smell of disinfectant mingled with burnt flesh was overpowering - I was in the special burns unit in Herat's hospital.

It was set up by a French charity in the Afghan city to treat women who set fire to themselves, usually to escape a violent husband or a forced marriage.

There I found Zeinab, an 18-year-old mother of two. Her eyes were vacant, her body covered with a mesh suit to conceal the raw flesh. After two years of constant beating she had poured oil from a lamp over herself, in front of her husband.

"I was going to wash it off. I am not the sort that would commit suicide," she told me, "then he jeered and said 'Look, she spent 20 Afghanis of my money to buy oil and didn't even burn herself'".

Zeinab grabbed the matches and set herself alight. This one unit sees 100 cases each year, but most women die before they reach the hospital.

I was in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001 when the whole world expressed outrage over the medieval regime which had forbidden women to work, banned girls from schools and executed women in a football stadium.

After the country was liberated, women were supposed to cast off their burkhas and embrace the new democracy introduced by President Hamid Karzai's government.

The new Constitution promised them equality and human rights under the law.

Eight years on, as I travelled around Afghanistan listening to their stories, I found that the vast majority of women are still downtrodden and desperate.

But some brave women are fighting against the odds to improve their own lives and those of other women.

Sold for sex

A staggering 60% of women are still forced into marriage as children - often as young as nine or ten. That has not changed since the West intervened, despite Afghan law stating that girls under 16 should not be married.

In practice, the government and families ignore the law. In the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, I found 17-year-old Saida who was on the run from her husband.

Her father had died when she was little and her brothers had claimed her as their property. They sold her off, at the age of 9, to a 60-year-old man.

"If he saw a shoe or a stick, anything - he would beat me with it," Saida said, "I had four miscarriages because of the beating and the stress".

Then her husband took his child bride on the road to places where they were not known and sold her to other men, forcing her to have sex with them.

Finally, Saida confided in a woman at a shrine in Mazar-i-Sharif, the police were alerted and Saida was taken to a women's shelter.

Staff at the shelter are helping her get a divorce, but her husband will not agree to let her go.

"He is in touch with my relatives on the phone," said Saida "He says he is praying for an opportunity to drink my blood".

'I do not accept bribes'

Afghanistan is a lawless place - the government is not able to implement its own laws to keep women safe or to protect them from a resurgent Taliban.

However, some women are standing up to the extremists. I spent time with the first female Prosecutor of Herat, Maria Bashir, who is guarded day and night by a posse of security men.

She has survived one bombing attack but her children are unable to go to school or to play with friends for fear of kidnap. The son of another law officer was beheaded by people who thought he was Maria's child.

"I do not accept bribes. I have many enemies because I have never acted illegally," Maria explained.

She continues to try to bring justice to the poor, especially women. But the police are reluctant to investigate crimes against women, and male judges often drastically reduce the jail sentences of men found guilty of such crimes.

"We are far from seeing the picture of equality promised under our Constitution," Maria said.

Women workers

One of the most inspiring women I met showed me how important it is to start at the grassroots to improve the lives of women.

Maryam set up a jam-making business when she returned as a refugee to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. She employed poor women from her small village. It was the first time they had earned money and had any independent life outside the home.

Maryam applied to be a contestant on the Afghan version of Dragon's Den - she promised her conservative family she would wear a hijab and cover her face to respect their honour.

Yet, the local Taliban began to threaten her after she got through the first three rounds of the contest.

"I told them I didn't do anything against Islam," Maryam said, "'Who are you to tell me what to do' I said".

The price for standing up to the Taliban was high - Maryam and her family had to flee their village.

But she came second in the television contest, winning a cheque for $10,000. With the money, she bought land on an industrial estate in Herat and is building a big jam factory to employ even more women.

I saw pathetic sights, women beggars and drug addicts, faceless women in burkhas who wanted to talk to me but were too afraid.

But I met courageous women too, including women activists working despite the threat of assassination and women MPs who stand up to bullying and intimidation in Parliament.

And most encouraging of all many young girls determined to finish school and have a career.

With 80% of Afghan women still illiterate, change will only eventually come if there is an equal opportunity for both girls and boys to be educated and if some measure of meaningful protection for women is introduced.

Change for women is painfully slow in Afghanistan and people are full of foreboding about what will happen after the presidential election if talks with the so-called 'moderate' Taliban go ahead.

Panorama: What are we fighting for? is on BBC One, Monday 17 August at 8.30pm.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_8204000/8204286.stm

Published: 2009/08/16 23:20:31 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Economist Slideshow on Afghanistan's Child Brides

2009-08-20T13:08:00.003-04:00

Freedom for the Slave Holder

2009-07-27T11:35:00.001-04:00

A North Preston man arrested in a series of police raids in the Halifax area last week was released on bail Tuesday.

Terry Randolph (Comfort) Downey, 30, of Downey Road is charged with human trafficking, living off the avails of prostitution and breaching a court order.

Crown attorney John Wade consented to Mr. Downey’s release Tuesday in Dartmouth provincial court.

Mr. Downey was freed on a $25,000 recognizance secured by a property surety and was ordered to follow a curfew from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. He must remain in Nova Scotia and report to Cole Harbour RCMP every Friday beginning July 17 and is prohibited from having any weapons.

He returns to court Aug. 27.

RCMP and Halifax Regional Police raided 15 homes last Friday in a sweep called Operation Intercede and nabbed 14 people on charges involving weapons, drugs, prostitution, fraud, possession of stolen property and break and enter.

The human trafficking charge is the first of its kind ever laid in Atlantic Canada, police said.

Seven of the 14 people charged in the raids remain in custody at the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility in Dartmouth. They’ll be back in court over the next two weeks.

2009-07-24T10:02:00.001-04:00

2009-07-24T09:53:00.000-04:00

Worldwide Trafficking Estimates by Organizations

Helping Haiti's child slaves

2009-07-23T23:12:00.000-04:00

2009-07-21T21:04:00.000-04:00

The Canadian Press -- Former high-level bureaucrat calls for national action plan on sex trade

Steve Lambert; 8 July 2009, 17:15

WINNIPEG _ A former federal adviser says Canada needs a national plan to combat human trafficking in the sex trade.

Police forces are inadequately staffed and trained to crack down on the underground system that ships young women and girls between controlling pimps, says Benjamin Perrin, who served as a senior policy adviser to the citizenship and immigration minister in 2006.

``You need committed people on the front lines, and there are some people like that but there are not enough of them,'' Perrin, who now teaches law at the University of British Columbia, told a human trafficking forum put on by the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs on Wednesday.

While most people may not like to acknowledge the extent of the problem, girls are being constantly trafficked between provinces and prevented from leaving their pimps either through physical violence or threats.

``I had two friends who were involved in prostitution . . . and they glamorized it,'' said Natasha Falle, who slipped into the sex trade at 15.

``I was being verbally abused (at home), and I went home with the these two girls one night, not knowing where I was going to sleep. It was only a matter of time before it sounded like a good idea.''

``It wasn't too long after that that a pimp did find me and did traffic me all across Canada.''

Falle escaped her pimp and returned home after 12 years of violence and drug use. She now works with the sex crimes unit in Toronto's police force.

Perrin said he was saddened, but not surprised, when he flew into Winnipeg for the conference and ran a quick check for erotic services on the online auction site Craigslist. He found more than a dozen listings featuring photos of young women.

Canada could adopt measures like those taken in the United States, he said, where online auction sites are required to obtain credit card information from people making a listing. Police can then identify and track down the girls.

``It resulted not only in a decline in the number of ads, but also . . . they are less explicit, there's less evidence, particularly of younger victims.''

Perrin praised some measures taken by the federal government, including a private member's bill tabled this year by Winnipeg Conservative backbencher Joy Smith that would impose a minimum five-year sentence on anyone convicted of human trafficking.

He also pointed to a handful of successful convictions, including that of Jacques Leonard-St. Vil, a Quebec man who admitted to trafficking a woman in Mississauga, Ont. Police said that over four months, the woman was severely beaten while earning $60,000 in three strip clubs. She handed all the money over to Leonard-St. Vil.

He pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced to 36 months in prison. He was released immediately, however, because he was given double credit for his time spent in custody while waiting for his trial.

The two-day forum comes at a time when aboriginal leaders across Canada are calling for help in dealing with the number of missing or dead young native women, some of whom vanished after being lured into prostitution.

Across Canada, 520 aboriginal women, most of them under 30, have disappeared or been killed since 1970, according to a report released this year by the Native Women's Association of Canada.

Last week, the body of Cherisse Houle, 17, was found in a creek outside Winnipeg. Several media reports have said she was a former sex trade worker who was trying to turn her life around. In 2007, the body of Fonessa Bruyere, another 17-year-old believed to have been a prostitute, was found in a field in northwest Winnipeg.

How does this work?

2009-07-07T11:40:00.001-04:00

When discussing how exactly we would go about raising consciousness among a larger group on the issue of modern slavery, we ran up against several problems. The first is a problem of time. We are not full time activists. We work both in and out of the home, raise families, and have obligations and responsibilities. Secondly, we have limited financial resources. None of us are millionaire philanthropists who can give heaps of money to worthy grassroots organizations to aid their work, or pay for billboard ads to spread an awareness of slavery today. Thirdly, and this is the most difficult to deal with, we are nervous about how we will be perceived by the people we are trying to educate.

As a group, we decided that a once-weekly meeting for a finite period at the beginning, followed by a longer period of less frequent meeting was all we could commit to. We meet for two hours and watch films and discuss readings that we have tried to do during the week. We try to post comments on the website to create a larger dialogue with those who are interested, but unable or unwilling to come to the weekly meetings.

As a group, we decided that our purposes are to educate ourselves and our pre-existing social networks about the issue of slavery. This doesn’t require financial support. We read the books and articles, we watch the films and surf the net, and then we summarize and paraphrase for our friends and family when the issue comes up. We post comments on discussion boards related to the news items that we review. We generally utilize our pre-existing networks.

For example, one mother cloth diapers her child, and is active on cloth-diapering and alternative parenting community websites. She recently found the opportunity to educate other mothers on the realities of the craigslist erotic services section. Another woman, reviewing the local news online, was able to post a comment related to a trafficking ring in a high school. We post flyers on bulletin boards at our churches, grocery stores, and community centers. We use our Facebook status updates to advertise the facts of modern slavery. A student of mine recently posted things on a marker board in her cubical at work, effectively creating her own billboard to spread awareness. Other students have set up movie nights with their friends to watch films that depict the horrors of trafficking.

What networks are you a member of? Are you in a support group, or a church? Do you play a sport? Are you a member of a club? It’s fairly simple to tell your kickball friends about slavery, or have your daughter’s Girl Scout troop raise money, or post a flyer where you go to your Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. We all have many ways of contributing.

Women against Slavery is not a big organization. We are not a comprehensive approach to battling slavery through legislation, and rehabilitation. We don’t need to be. Our goals are simple and small. When we educate ourselves, and are passionate about an issue, that knowledge and passion are bound to spread in ever widening circles among those we come in contact with. Do not be incapacitated by a feeling of pointlessness. Do not feel overwhelmed. Just do something small, and have faith that it will make a difference.

David Batstone Interview

2009-06-06T22:04:00.001-04:00

What is this group all about?

2009-06-05T13:28:00.000-04:00

Most people believe slavery to be a relic from a bygone and barbaric chapter of human history. In reality, more people are enslaved today than ever before. It is estimated that 80% of enslaved people are women. This is a new group that informally explores the problems of modern slavery, and the special role that women must play in the solution.

Consciousness- raising groups have the goal of raising awareness among a larger group of people about a particular issue. Educating people on the issue of human trafficking, (what modern day slavery is euphemistically called) is the first step towards wiping out this heinous crime. Women have a special role to play in this new abolitionist movement. There are already very organized groups that are doing worthwhile work to raise money, fight political battles, and create legislation. None address the fact that slavery is very particularly a women’s issue. Women make up a disproportionate majority of enslaved people, an estimated 80%. In addition, giving voice to marginalized groups who cannot speak on their own behalf has always been in the purview of feminism.

Women Against Slavery comes from this tradition of consciousness-raising groups consisting of women only. We discuss issues of modern day slavery, educating ourselves and others about the realities of this hidden world. Some meetings are more formal, functioning almost like a seminar or graduate level class with readings assigned, documentary viewing, and visiting lecturers. Some meetings are more in the spirit of the original consciousness- raising groups and are informal rap sessions about our personal insights and experiences, which an understanding that the personal is political and our individual experiences reflect cultural realities.

The group is open to women of any age, education level, profession, religion or political views. We do restrict meetings and blog postings to women only, to provide a space for women to feel safe and expand on their ideas. Woman-run groups tend to value personal experience and collaboration, and have less rigid hierarchical structures.

Women played a key role in abolishing legal slavery, all in a time when women didn’t yet possess the vote. Because of cultural and legal limitations, women had to work outside of the male run institutions to create change. The necessity to be both more radical and subversive and yet more subtle and ingenious in tactics and mission was born of these limitations.

Women’s groups embody a spirit of collaboration and synergy not often duplicated in mixed gender and male dominated institutions. Equality among the membership and a willingness to empathize with others and see commonalities instead of differences enables women’s groups to function and thrive. Women against Slavery empathize with enslaved persons as women and human beings. We understand that deep seated, cultural problems exist which make the commodification of human beings possible. It is a willingness to engage these issues, challenging ourselves and others to rethink the world that is the hopeful goal of this organization.

If you are interested in joining the Ottawa Women Against Slavery group, starting your own local Women Against Slavery group, or posting on the blog, please feel free to contact us.

Anna Besch

a_besch@hotmail.com

A Heroine from the Brothels

2009-06-05T10:19:00.000-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/opinion/25kristof.html

Modern Slavery 101

2009-06-04T10:39:00.001-04:00

http://www.iabolish.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=4&Itemid=7

What is a "consciousness raising group?"

2009-06-04T10:36:00.000-04:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_raising

The Girls Next Door

2009-06-04T10:33:00.000-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/magazine/25SEXTRAFFIC.html?scp=1&sq=The%20Girls%20Next%20Door&st=cse

Gloria Steinem audio interview on human trafficking

2009-06-03T15:47:00.000-04:00

http://www.onpointradio.org/2006/12/gloria-steinem