Labor traffickers use violence, threats, lies, and other forms of coercion to force people to work against their will in many different industries. Common types of labor trafficking include people forced to work in homes as domestic servants, farmworkers coerced through violence as they harvest crops, or factory workers held in inhumane conditions with little to no pay. In the United States, these forms of forced labor are more prevalent than many people realize. However, Polaris Project and others working in the human trafficking field are learning more on a daily basis about the different types of labor trafficking that exist amongst us. In the United States, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) defines labor trafficking as: “The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery.” Click here to access resource packs on labor trafficking.
http://t.co/3UjOZuh
Monday, 2 May 2011
Sex slave at age 11, little girl bravely tells her horror tale to save others BY Mike Jaccarino
Richard Harbus for News
Yolanda Agostini is the grandmother of an 11-year-old child abducted and repeatedly raped. Lured from home by a sexual predator, the fifth-grader was pimped out to a series of men in a lower East Side flat.
"One man gave me $700, another gave me $1,000 and another gave me $500," the girl told the Daily News, which is withholding her name.
"Maybe there were five or six men, in all."
The ordeal ended after the victim managed to call her grandmother.
When the phone rang, there was silence on the other end, but Yolanda Agostini knew it was the grade-schooler.
"Talk to me," Agostini pleaded. "If it's you, please tell me where you are."
Finally, after 20 minutes, a faraway voice murmured: "Mommy, it's me. They're hurting me. Please, I need you ... I'm in a house, I don't know where."
"Get out," Agostini ordered, and the girl ran from her captors, who were sleeping in the next room, onto Delancey St.
Cops found her, and doctors at Jacobi Medical Center determined she'd been raped. The girl told her family she had been forced to have sex with strangers.
The damage has been lasting. The girl is in treatment at a Westchester clinic and comes home only on weekends.
Five-foot-four with the bearing of an adult, she has brown eyes, a round face and shoulder-length black hair. She speaks matter-of-factly, but without eye contact.
"I want them to go through pain 24 hours a day," she said tearfully of her abductors while sitting in her family's living room in a northeast Bronx housing project.
"I want someone to make them do stuff the way they made me do stuff...I want them to go through what I went through. I think about nothing but anger."
Her story illustrates the grotesque underbelly of sex trafficking in the city - the cases that don't make headlines like the ordeal of a young Bronx runaway who was pimped out to ex-New York Giant Lawrence Taylor.
"This happens more times than society is willing to admit," said Gloria Allred, the famed lawyer for the 16-year-old girl in Taylor's case. Taylor got probation.
The NYPD reported 6,544 missing-kid cases - all but 100 involving runaways - last year, the state Division of Criminal Justice Services says. It solved 6,320.
Joe Mazzilli, a private investigator and former NYPD detective, says some 40% of the hundreds of missing kid and runaway cases he's worked on involve prostitution or pornography.
"There are very few cases that involve someone as young as 10 or 11 years old," he said. "But on the flip side, once they hit 13, there are thousands of cases like that. It's so sad."
"These girls are vulnerable," said Brian Conroy, chief of the NYPD's vice enforcement division. "You can't help but feel compassion. There are other girls out there in similar straits. We have to find them."
The Bronx 11-year-old was indeed vulnerable.
She and two sisters had been placed in Agostini's care after their mother was busted for marijuana possession; their father lives in Florida.
In August 2009, after Agostini, 48, was busted for drugs, the girl and her sisters went to a foster home in Hunts Point.
That's where she met Dawud McKelvin, 30.
"The [foster parent] let her sit on the front of the building by herself and that's how she met him," Agostini said. "I guess he was walking by and approached her."
After the charges against Agostini were dropped, she got the sisters back on Dec. 1, 2009.
The granddaughter - then just 10 - was secretly seeing McKelvin, who, cops say, preyed on her sexually.
"He threatened her, told her that if she ever told us about him he would kill me, her mother and her siblings," Agostini said. "He had her manipulated very well. He bent her mind."
It went on for months - until Sept. 14, when the girl failed to come home from school.
Police were called, and helicopters searched from the sky while K-9 unit dogs sniffed Dumpsters.
"The worst thoughts go through your mind," Agostini said. "I asked God to hold her, protect her. So many things I promised God for her return."
"David," as the girl calls McKelvin, lured her into a car and "took me," she said. "He called me the day before and asked me if I wanted to come live with him."
She was taken to an apartment on W. 110th St. in Manhattan, where she was raped several times by McKelvin's cousin, Lee McKelvin, 37, court papers say.
From there, the youngster said, she was taken to the lower East Side, where she was held by a man named Frankie and two women named Tiny and Jenna.
Cops zeroed in on Dawud McKelvin, who had sent explicit photos of himself to Agostini's cell phone. He was charged with aggravated harassment but denied knowing the girl's whereabouts.
After she escaped, Dawud McKelvin was indicted on charges of rape and predatory sexual assault against a child and other crimes.
His lawyer, Jodi Morales of the Bronx Defenders, did not return calls for comment.
Lee McKelvin was indicted on charges of rape, criminal sexual assault and predatory sexual assault by a Manhattan grand jury. His Legal Aid lawyer did not return calls.
The girl prays for solace, and hopes her story can save another young victim.
"If something bad is happening, open your mouth," she cautioned. "Tell your mom. Don't be scared. Don't ever be scared."
With Rocco Parascandola, Kevin Deutsch and Melissa Grace
mjaccarino@nydailynews.com
Underage sex trade still flourishing online
By Amber Lyon and Steve Turnham,
Editor's note: Hundreds of thousands of girls under the age of 18 are sold as sex slaves in the U.S. In a yearlong investigation, CNN's Amber Lyon reveals the devastating realities of the business of underage sex. Don't miss CNN Presents "Selling the Girl Next Door" this Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on CNN.
In a statement dated December 28, backpage.com said it is "committed to preventing those who are intent on misusing the site for illegal purposes." Read an up-to-date list of the safety measures backpage.com says it is taking.
Las Vegas, Nevada (CNN) -- Her ankles and wrists are shackled. She's wearing used sweats in the bright colors of the jailhouse, orange, blue and yellow. She shuffles to the courtroom to face the judge, her mother, and an uncertain future.
Selena is a 13-year-old who was sold for sex.
She wants to go home to her house in the suburbs and the baby sister she hardly knows. And now, facing a sympathetic judge and a loving mother who wants to make sure she's safe, Selena is being told she can't go home.
"I want to go home and I want to be with my family, that's all I want," she tells Juvenile Court Judge William Voy, her face bathed in tears. "This isn't making me any better in here."
Selena was arrested by undercover police on the Vegas strip on prostitution charges. But although she exchanged sex for money, in the eyes of the law, she's a victim, by virtue of her age and the circumstances under which she was sold: by a pimp on the website backpage.com, a pimp who used drugs to entice her, and took everything she earned.
"It made me feel so nasty, I always just want a shower and get it off. I was like, oh, it's so disgusting," she said. "And it never made me feel pretty, not one time, not one time."
She told us she was seeing four or five men a day, at the standard rate of $300 for an hour, $150 for a half.
She may be a victim, but she can't go home, because no one trusts that she won't run again, back into the arms of a pimp.
Girls bought and sold online
Experts: Child sex trafficking 'slavery'
Craigslist closes controversial section
RELATED TOPICS
* Prostitution and Sex Workers
* Human Trafficking
* Crime and Law
Like so many other underage trafficking victims, Selena is a chronic runaway, picked up by a pimp after she took off from home.
"I was at the bus stop and he said 'Oh, do you need a ride?' and I was like 'Yeah I do.' I liked him a lot. I was straight up obsessed. I was like 'Wow, he's so cute,'" she says from an interview room at the Clark County Juvenile Justice Center, where she's being held.
"It wasn't just at first like 'Oh bitch, go get me money,' it wasn't like that at first -- but then it got like that."
Home for Selena is a nice single-family house in a new development on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Selena's mother shows us her room. It looks like any other 13-year-old girl's, except for the lipstick scrawl on her bedroom mirror spelling out the names of boys her mother has never met: boys, or maybe men.
"I don't know. I mean, honestly, I don't know what's happening," her mother says. "I only knows what she tells me. And she doesn't really tell me anything. So I don't know."
Selena and her mother agreed to speak with us on camera. Their names have been changed so that any future internet searches don't link her back to this story.
But speaking on camera under these circumstances is a mark of bravery, and also of desperation.
"People say, 'Oh, Las Vegas,' but it's not just Las Vegas," says Selena's mother, who is a schoolteacher. "You hear everywhere of kids, you know, being picked up and you never ever see them again. So it's a horrible feeling. And no matter how many times that I talk to her about it, it's just like she's just not getting it. She's not."
She's not alone. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, there are at least 100,000 underage girls being sex trafficked in America today.
That's a conservative estimate based on what little hard data currently exists; NCMEC believes the real number could be as high as 300,000.
Most are runaways, suffering from psychological problems or drug dependence, picked up and sold by pimps for staggering profits. According to studies, pimps can make up to half a million dollars a year, and they frequently prey on the young and the vulnerable.
The pimps ply their trade on the web, the new marketplace for underage sex trafficking. Last year, victims' advocates called the internet classified site Craigslist's Adult Service Section the "Walmart of child sex trafficking."
CNN investigated Craigslist, posting an ad and receiving numerous calls from men seeking sex. That investigation helped spark a national conversation and outrage, as well as a call from 17 attorneys general around the country for Craigslist to shut down its adult services section.
Video: Confronting Craigslist Video
But when Craigslist shut down its section, the escort ads migrated to another site, backpage.com. We decided to investigate Backpage after advocacy groups accused the website, which is owned by the Village Voice Media Group, of facilitating the trafficking of underage girls.
According to the AIM Group, an internet consulting firm, Backpage's escort site earned an estimated $20 million in 2010. Its profits soared after Craigslist decided to pull the plug on its adult services section.
We found cases all over the country of underage girls being sold for sex on Backpage: Selena in Vegas, a 12-year-old in suburban Maryland, and a 14-year-old in St. Louis.
For months, CNN has requested an interview with Backpage and Village Voice Media executives to talk about the accusations, but the company has refused.
Last fall, Backpage hired internet security advisor Hemu Nigam to implement "a holistic plan centered around preventing criminal activity on our site." We wanted to know what that "holistic plan" was, but Nigam wouldn't talk to us either.
Full nudity appears to have disappeared from the site, but suspect ads with tag lines such as "Daddy's Little Girl" are common.
We posted our own ad, using a photo of CNN correspondent Amber Lyon when she was 14 years old. She told the men who called that she was underage; most didn't care.
Video: CNN's Amber Lyon posts Backpage ad Video
One man offered Lyon $30,000 to travel to another state and meet a wealthy friend of his to have sex in an expensive hotel. We went to the hotel, confirmed the offer was genuine, but stopped before accepting the money.
But the point where we stopped is the start for many underage prostitutes, like Selena.
Selena desperately wants to return home, but the judge and her mother fear she will run away again and fall into the hands of another pimp.
So they came up with a short-term solution: to send her to a facility in Salt Lake City that can at least deal with her drug problems.
A private foundation is standing by to assist with long-term care when she gets out. But there are no guarantees.
Her mother remembers Selena when she was 11, getting good grades, a happy kid, before it all went wrong.
She sometimes wishes her daughter would be like other kids, just for a day.
"You know, just to have a kid that actually just goes to school and comes home and does their homework and watches TV, you know. And it's tough. But that's not the case," she says.
"I don't want to take anything away from her because she's great, in her own way. It's just, I don't know, I feel like she's lost -- to be honest, I do."
Underage sex trade still flourishing online - http://bit.ly/ehoboQ #cnn
Editor's note: Hundreds of thousands of girls under the age of 18 are sold as sex slaves in the U.S. In a yearlong investigation, CNN's Amber Lyon reveals the devastating realities of the business of underage sex. Don't miss CNN Presents "Selling the Girl Next Door" this Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on CNN.
In a statement dated December 28, backpage.com said it is "committed to preventing those who are intent on misusing the site for illegal purposes." Read an up-to-date list of the safety measures backpage.com says it is taking.
Las Vegas, Nevada (CNN) -- Her ankles and wrists are shackled. She's wearing used sweats in the bright colors of the jailhouse, orange, blue and yellow. She shuffles to the courtroom to face the judge, her mother, and an uncertain future.
Selena is a 13-year-old who was sold for sex.
She wants to go home to her house in the suburbs and the baby sister she hardly knows. And now, facing a sympathetic judge and a loving mother who wants to make sure she's safe, Selena is being told she can't go home.
"I want to go home and I want to be with my family, that's all I want," she tells Juvenile Court Judge William Voy, her face bathed in tears. "This isn't making me any better in here."
Selena was arrested by undercover police on the Vegas strip on prostitution charges. But although she exchanged sex for money, in the eyes of the law, she's a victim, by virtue of her age and the circumstances under which she was sold: by a pimp on the website backpage.com, a pimp who used drugs to entice her, and took everything she earned.
"It made me feel so nasty, I always just want a shower and get it off. I was like, oh, it's so disgusting," she said. "And it never made me feel pretty, not one time, not one time."
She told us she was seeing four or five men a day, at the standard rate of $300 for an hour, $150 for a half.
She may be a victim, but she can't go home, because no one trusts that she won't run again, back into the arms of a pimp.
Girls bought and sold online
Experts: Child sex trafficking 'slavery'
Craigslist closes controversial section
RELATED TOPICS
* Prostitution and Sex Workers
* Human Trafficking
* Crime and Law
Like so many other underage trafficking victims, Selena is a chronic runaway, picked up by a pimp after she took off from home.
"I was at the bus stop and he said 'Oh, do you need a ride?' and I was like 'Yeah I do.' I liked him a lot. I was straight up obsessed. I was like 'Wow, he's so cute,'" she says from an interview room at the Clark County Juvenile Justice Center, where she's being held.
"It wasn't just at first like 'Oh bitch, go get me money,' it wasn't like that at first -- but then it got like that."
Home for Selena is a nice single-family house in a new development on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Selena's mother shows us her room. It looks like any other 13-year-old girl's, except for the lipstick scrawl on her bedroom mirror spelling out the names of boys her mother has never met: boys, or maybe men.
"I don't know. I mean, honestly, I don't know what's happening," her mother says. "I only knows what she tells me. And she doesn't really tell me anything. So I don't know."
Selena and her mother agreed to speak with us on camera. Their names have been changed so that any future internet searches don't link her back to this story.
But speaking on camera under these circumstances is a mark of bravery, and also of desperation.
"People say, 'Oh, Las Vegas,' but it's not just Las Vegas," says Selena's mother, who is a schoolteacher. "You hear everywhere of kids, you know, being picked up and you never ever see them again. So it's a horrible feeling. And no matter how many times that I talk to her about it, it's just like she's just not getting it. She's not."
She's not alone. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, there are at least 100,000 underage girls being sex trafficked in America today.
That's a conservative estimate based on what little hard data currently exists; NCMEC believes the real number could be as high as 300,000.
Most are runaways, suffering from psychological problems or drug dependence, picked up and sold by pimps for staggering profits. According to studies, pimps can make up to half a million dollars a year, and they frequently prey on the young and the vulnerable.
The pimps ply their trade on the web, the new marketplace for underage sex trafficking. Last year, victims' advocates called the internet classified site Craigslist's Adult Service Section the "Walmart of child sex trafficking."
CNN investigated Craigslist, posting an ad and receiving numerous calls from men seeking sex. That investigation helped spark a national conversation and outrage, as well as a call from 17 attorneys general around the country for Craigslist to shut down its adult services section.
Video: Confronting Craigslist Video
But when Craigslist shut down its section, the escort ads migrated to another site, backpage.com. We decided to investigate Backpage after advocacy groups accused the website, which is owned by the Village Voice Media Group, of facilitating the trafficking of underage girls.
According to the AIM Group, an internet consulting firm, Backpage's escort site earned an estimated $20 million in 2010. Its profits soared after Craigslist decided to pull the plug on its adult services section.
We found cases all over the country of underage girls being sold for sex on Backpage: Selena in Vegas, a 12-year-old in suburban Maryland, and a 14-year-old in St. Louis.
For months, CNN has requested an interview with Backpage and Village Voice Media executives to talk about the accusations, but the company has refused.
Last fall, Backpage hired internet security advisor Hemu Nigam to implement "a holistic plan centered around preventing criminal activity on our site." We wanted to know what that "holistic plan" was, but Nigam wouldn't talk to us either.
Full nudity appears to have disappeared from the site, but suspect ads with tag lines such as "Daddy's Little Girl" are common.
We posted our own ad, using a photo of CNN correspondent Amber Lyon when she was 14 years old. She told the men who called that she was underage; most didn't care.
Video: CNN's Amber Lyon posts Backpage ad Video
One man offered Lyon $30,000 to travel to another state and meet a wealthy friend of his to have sex in an expensive hotel. We went to the hotel, confirmed the offer was genuine, but stopped before accepting the money.
But the point where we stopped is the start for many underage prostitutes, like Selena.
Selena desperately wants to return home, but the judge and her mother fear she will run away again and fall into the hands of another pimp.
So they came up with a short-term solution: to send her to a facility in Salt Lake City that can at least deal with her drug problems.
A private foundation is standing by to assist with long-term care when she gets out. But there are no guarantees.
Her mother remembers Selena when she was 11, getting good grades, a happy kid, before it all went wrong.
She sometimes wishes her daughter would be like other kids, just for a day.
"You know, just to have a kid that actually just goes to school and comes home and does their homework and watches TV, you know. And it's tough. But that's not the case," she says.
"I don't want to take anything away from her because she's great, in her own way. It's just, I don't know, I feel like she's lost -- to be honest, I do."
Underage sex trade still flourishing online - http://bit.ly/ehoboQ #cnn
Romanian Psychologist Stages Kidnappings to Save Human Sex Trafficking V...
http://captivedaughters.org Learn what countries Romania gets girls from, how Iana Matei has saved over 400 girls lives, and how Romania is doing on combating human sex trafficking.
Today's trafficking report is on Romania. The U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Human Trafficking lists Romania in Tier two. This means that the Government of Romania does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. However, it is making significant efforts to do so.
Romania is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. As a destination country, Romania receives women and children from Moldova, Colombia, and France who are forced into prostitution.
To better understand the issue of sex trafficking in Romania, we are featuring a recent article , Rescuing Young women from Traffickers' Hands which appeared in the New York Times on October 16th, 2010 and can be found on our blog.
This article detailed the efforts of Ms. Iana Matei, Romania's leading advocate for the victims of sex trafficking. For more than 10 years, Matei, a psychologist by training, has been pulling young women out of the hands of traffickers, sometimes by staging "kidnappings," and other times by offering victims a place to stay, heal and rebuild their lives. Until a few years ago, Matei's shelter was the only one in Romania for victims of traffickers, though the country has been a center for the trade in young girls for decades. Too often, she said, Romanians see the young women as nothing more than prostitutes. "They are victims," she said. "They are too young to be anything else."
These victims of trafficking are almost always from poor, abusive families and the girls are sometimes sold into the trade by their own parents. Some are lured to foreign countries with promises of jobs or marriage. But once out of the country, they are sold to gangs and locked up in brothels or forced to work the streets.
Matei has been critical of Romania's current services for victims which allow only a maximum ten day stay in the government-run shelters. Most of the young women who arrive at her shelter, where they can stay for up to a year, are in a terrible state, she said. The victims are so out of sorts that even making the smallest decision like what to wear is very difficult for them.
A few times traffickers have showed up at Matei's shelter — a spare house in a residential neighborhood surrounded by a high fence — trying to get the girls back. Once, Matei said, she confronted them in the narrow street outside, using her car to block their vehicle.
Confirming Matei's belief that Romania has lagged behind in addressing trafficking issues, we note that U.S. State Department reports that the Government of Romania significantly decreased its efforts to protect and assist victims of trafficking during the 2009 reporting period. In 2009 the government provided no funding for anti-trafficking and victim-service NGOs, compared with $270,000 provided to four NGOs in 2008. This lack of government funding caused a significant decrease in the number of victims assisted by both government agencies and NGOs.
Over the years, she has cobbled together all sorts of financing, pleading with various embassies. Right now, the shelter is supported by an American ministry dedicated to combating human trafficking, Make Way Partners in Birmingham, Ala. But Matei would like to see it become self-sustaining. In the meantime, she makes do. More than 400 girls have stayed in the shelter, and many of them have kept in touch with Matei, the woman who offered them a new life.
Dad Only Gets 6 Years for Impregnating Teen Daughter Posted by Jeanne Sager
Sometimes, there are so many things wrong with a story that you read in the news, that you want to go back to bed, pull up the covers and not come back out until you've recovered. Prepare to smuggle me some chocolate to keep me going, because I think it's going to be awhile before I emerge from the blankets with this one.
A girl was just 14 years old when she gave birth to her second child. Shocking fact number one. Shocking fact number two? She gave birth to the first child when she was herself a child of 12 -- I know girls who hadn't hit puberty at that age. But folks, this is not the most disturbing part of this. Not by a long shot.
It turns out that both of this little girl's babies were fathered not by some just barely pubescent little jerk with baggy pants and the inability to grow a mustache. No, it was the teenage girl's own father who forced her to have sex with him. Now that I have to go take a shower because I'm so incredibly disgusted, we can go for the real zinger.
The courts reviewed each and every one of these facts and decided they'd charge disgusting Daddy. And then they sentenced him. To six years in jail.
SIX YEARS? For raping and impregnating his own child? Twice? At the very least (because chances are pretty good that it took more than two tries at pregnancy)? To compare this, a man currently in prison for raping a 12-year-old girl is in the middle of a a 16- to 40-year sentence. That sounds more fitting. Or perhaps we should look at the pimp sentenced to 20 years in prison for forcing a 17-year-old girl to act as his prostitute? He didn't even do the sexual abuse on that child himself, and yet it's a sentence more befitting his crimes against a girl's innocence.
What this man, this father, did was break one of the most sacred bonds -- that of child and parent. He took away her childhood with the sex, but just as badly, he took away her ability to find comfort in the one place every kid should be able to find a champion.
Is this sentence just? What would be a more appropriate punishment?
Image via Shutr/Flickr
Dad Only Gets 6 Years for Impregnating Teen Daughter http://t.co/hcLi7xB
Freedom: Raising Awareness About Human Trafficking
Warning: what you are about to read will either make your skin crawl or your eyebrows rise to impossible heights in disbelief. Here it is: slavery—the forcing of one or more humans by another for the purposes of forced labor, bonded labor, or forced prostitution—and human trafficking are alive and well in the world today. They really are. According to a report by the U.S. Department of State, there were over 12 million people in slavery in 2010 across the globe, two million of them being children. Shockingly, it is estimated by the DNA Foundation that every 10 minutes, a woman or child is trafficked into the United States for forced labor. This is a real problem, one of the basest kind, because it entails the stripping away of even the most basic human rights, because it is one which so many governments are still not yet fully fighting, because it is one which so many people are unaware of, and because it is so widespread.Think of a world where it no longer existed, though, where those 12 million people were free to live, grow, and work for themselves. Think about how good it might feel to contribute to that kind of future. The DNA Foundation, started by celebrities Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher to raise awareness about child sex slavery, change the cultural stereotypes that facilitate this horrific problem, and rehabilitate innocent victims, strives for that future. Most recently, those efforts have been centered on an interactive online campaign called “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls.” This campaign invites everyone to view and make “Real Men” videos with stars such as Jason Mraz and Jamie Foxx, and share it with their friends. A press release from a DNA Foundation representative states: “Consumers will play a critical role in spreading the word about the campaign by creating their own personalized video and sharing it with friends.”
Supporters are invited to go to the DNA Foundation Facebook page and click on the “Real Men” application tab. The application will allow guests to insert their own photo into the celebrity video in order to create their very own “Real Men” video. After the video is created, they can share it with their friends by posting on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The goal is for as many people as possible to watch the videos, create a personalized video, and spread the word about child sex slavery. All videos can be viewed at www.demiandashton.org/realmen.
The fact that there is still a need for such a campaign is appalling. But yet, even some of us at Mom It Forward have seen it first-hand (see this post). Jyl herself can attest to some of its horrific effects. When you really think about it, after your skin stops crawling and your eyebrows return to their normal level, you might be a little overwhelmed by the need for help. Keep in mind, however, that we bring you this information because it fits with our mission of changing the world one mom at a time, one small action at a time. All of these efforts will add up over time.
Photo courtesy of DemiandAshton.org.
Freedom: Raising Awareness About Human Trafficking http://bit.ly/ioEp6j
Trafficking takes its toll on women
BY KITT MOLINA and ALETA SANTOS
Hope for the Youth Foundation and VERA Files
THIS is a true story about a crime that, despite the existence of a law, has gone unpunished.
“Nora,” 22, is a victim of human trafficking, one of up to 100,000 Filipino women and children who are believed to be victimized every year.
A single parent, she comes from a poor family living in the outskirts of Metro Manila. Under R.A. 9208 or the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, however, Nora may not reveal for this story her true name or those whom she has accused of committing the crime.
It has been almost two years since she and two other Filipinas filed a case of illegal recruitment and human trafficking against the local agency that deployed them to South Korea where they were forced to work as “guest relation officers” or GROs and engage in acts of prostitution.
Their case gathered dust until one of the complainants filed an affidavit of desistance, which, as Nora expected, led to the dismissal of the case. They sued their local recruiter for money claims due to unpaid wages but this, too, was dismissed by the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC).
“Nadi-dismiss po sa NLRC ’yung case dahil ’yung isang kasama bumaligtad, kaya po lumakas ang laban ng kabila. Narinig naming gumawa siya ng desistance kasi napapagod na raw po siya at nagpabayad na lang siya. Trinaydor niya pa rin kami. (Our case filed with National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) was dismissed because one of us had a change of heart which helped the other side. We heard she filed an affidavit of desistance because she got tired and would rather be paid. She betrayed us).”
Both cases have been appealed by Nora who did not expect that her fight for justice would come to naught given the reported all-out campaign of the government against human traffickers. Moreover, the House of Representatives’ Committee on Overseas Filipino Workers has initiated the filing of the criminal case against the local recruiter. The committee, with the help of a lawyer from Malacañang, was instrumental in rescuing Nora and her two co-workers from the South Korean nightclub where they worked. The officials demanded from the local recruitment agency the return of the three Filipina workers to the Philippines.
The Philippine embassy in South Korea was not involved at all in the repatriation of the trafficked Filipinas. “Sa palagay ko, alam ng embassy dun pero pinagtatakpan (I think the embassy there knows but they’re covering it up),” says Nora.
Recruiters’ strategy
Ironically, it is now Nora who is on the defensive. She has been charged with perjury and falsification of public documents by her recruiter, which continues to send Filipina entertainers to South Korea despite a pending complaint against the agency before the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA).
Being used against Nora was the blank document signed by her mother who was told that this was a requirement for the quick deployment of her daughter to South Korea.
The day before her departure, Nora also signed a hand-written document stating that she owed her recruiter P30,000. The document stipulated her monthly salary would be $300 to be given on her seventh month at work with a three-month deduction as placement fee and reimbursement for other expenses.
“Ganyan talaga ang strategy ng recruiters. They file counter-charges at magtatagal ang kaso hanggang mag-settle na lang ang complainant. ’Yan ang problema sa ating judicial system. (That’s the usual strategy of recruiters. They file countercharges which prolong the case and force the complainant to go for a settlement. That’s the problem with our judicial system),” says Erwin Puhawan, a paralegal of the Kanlungan Center Foundation Inc., who helps Nora follow up her case.
Prosecutors abet the practice of settling even criminal cases, which is patently wrong, adds Puhawan, the only person who agreed to be identified in this story.
But the problem lies not just in the judicial system but also in the law itself. The Kanlungan paralegal says human-trafficking victims run the risk of violating the confidentiality clause of the anti-human trafficking law when they expose and identify illegal recruiters to warn others about the modus operandi. The law prohibits public disclosure of the name and personal circumstances of the trafficked person as well as of the accused.
But even without naming names and places, Nora’s experience in South Korea stands out for the boldness of her recruiter.
On the day that Nora and her companions arrived in Manila escorted by airport security, several personnel of the recruitment agency that deployed them were also at the airport waiting for their arrival. The victims had to hide from their recruiter’s staff to get out of the airport.
Source, transit, destination point
The Philippines has been identified in the 2010 US State Department trafficking report as a source, transit and destination point of human-trafficking victims. The same report noted the pervasive corruption in the country, which has allowed human trafficking to flourish with either the tacit or explicit permission of officials in government units and agencies assigned to combat the problem.
The Philippines has been on the State Department’s Tier 2 Watch List for two consecutive years, and was in danger of being downgraded this year to Tier 3 Watch List, which would mean a drastic cut on humanitarian and non-trade-related aid.
But the downgrade was averted with the rush of 22 convictions involving 23 human traffickers before the release of the State Department Human Trafficking Report for 2011 in June.
President Aquino recently announced that the Philippines would be removed from the Watch List although it would still be categorized under Tier 2. In this category are those governments that “do not fully comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.”
A $32-billion industry that victimizes 12.3 million adults and children around the world, human trafficking has been described as a form of modern-day slavery.
Bondage
Indeed, Nora and her companions were kept in bondage during their two-week stay in South Korea. Hired in Manila as singers of a band, they were required to wear sexy dresses and assigned to entertain inside private rooms where customers mashed their breasts and touched their genitals.
“Puros kabastusan ang nangyayari sa loob ng kwarto. Lahat po ng kababaihan dun ganun din ang ginagawa (All kinds of obscenities are happening in that room. They do these to all the women),” recalls Nora of her first day at the club.
Nora says they were made to greet guests by raising their skirts and pulling down their panties. Several times, customers forced Nora to dance naked, to masturbate and to perform oral sex on them. She could only cry while customers laughed at her misery and rage.
On their first day at work, Nora and her two companions decided that they would go back to the Philippines, but the question was how. They did not have money and escape seemed impossible.
Their South Korean employers confiscated their passports upon their arrival. They were always guarded and threatened with arrest. Two mamasans assigned to them warned that they, together with their parents, would be arrested if they escaped.
Their world outside of the nightclub was confined to a small room where they stayed before the daily grind started at 4 p.m. Work at the club usually ended around 4 to 6 a.m. or sometimes until 9 a.m. In one of the clubs where she was transferred, Nora noticed cameras all over the place. Their moves were closely monitored.
“Sobrang dami pong mga Pilipina dun (There are so many Filipinas there),” says Nora of the people she met and saw at work. Some of the Filipina “guest relations officers” or GROs working in the bars were also deployed by her local recruiter.
Still hoping
According to Nora, the South Korean nightclub owners did not let them go easily despite the intervention of a Malacañang official in the case. They were furious upon learning that Nora and her two companions were able to call up and inform their families in Manila about their situation.
They tried to convince the three Filipinas to stay, with a promise that they would be deployed to a different club. When the three stood their ground, one of the club owners threatened to kill them.
Before finally allowing the three Filipinas to go home, they were asked to sign a waiver stating that they were returning to the Philippines because they were homesick.
In Manila, Nora discovered at the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration that her real salary was $600 a month, not $300, and that her contract was for one year, not two years.
Nora has since found a job at a trading store in Manila, but is in danger of losing it because of her frequent absences.
“Lagi akong absent dahil inaasikaso ko ang anak ko na laging nagkakasakit at ’yung kaso ko (I’m always absent because I have to take care of my son who is often sick and I have to attend to the case),” she explains.
Still, Nora is not giving up hope. With the assistance of the nongovernment organization Kanlungan, she wants to pursue the criminal case against her recruiter. She hopes employers—and society in general—would be more sympathetic to trafficking survivors like her who fight for dear life almost daily.
(The audio slideshow was produced by Vincent Go as part of the training course, “Thinking Beyond Stills: A multimedia course for photojournalists,” by VERA Files, in partnership with the Canadian Embassy. The trainers were multi-awarded phojournalist Luis Liwanag and VERA Files trustees Luz Rimban and Yvonne Chua.)
Trafficking takes its toll on women | VERA Files http://t.co/ZTt85Oe
Hope for the Youth Foundation and VERA Files
THIS is a true story about a crime that, despite the existence of a law, has gone unpunished.
“Nora,” 22, is a victim of human trafficking, one of up to 100,000 Filipino women and children who are believed to be victimized every year.
A single parent, she comes from a poor family living in the outskirts of Metro Manila. Under R.A. 9208 or the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, however, Nora may not reveal for this story her true name or those whom she has accused of committing the crime.
It has been almost two years since she and two other Filipinas filed a case of illegal recruitment and human trafficking against the local agency that deployed them to South Korea where they were forced to work as “guest relation officers” or GROs and engage in acts of prostitution.
Their case gathered dust until one of the complainants filed an affidavit of desistance, which, as Nora expected, led to the dismissal of the case. They sued their local recruiter for money claims due to unpaid wages but this, too, was dismissed by the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC).
“Nadi-dismiss po sa NLRC ’yung case dahil ’yung isang kasama bumaligtad, kaya po lumakas ang laban ng kabila. Narinig naming gumawa siya ng desistance kasi napapagod na raw po siya at nagpabayad na lang siya. Trinaydor niya pa rin kami. (Our case filed with National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) was dismissed because one of us had a change of heart which helped the other side. We heard she filed an affidavit of desistance because she got tired and would rather be paid. She betrayed us).”
Both cases have been appealed by Nora who did not expect that her fight for justice would come to naught given the reported all-out campaign of the government against human traffickers. Moreover, the House of Representatives’ Committee on Overseas Filipino Workers has initiated the filing of the criminal case against the local recruiter. The committee, with the help of a lawyer from Malacañang, was instrumental in rescuing Nora and her two co-workers from the South Korean nightclub where they worked. The officials demanded from the local recruitment agency the return of the three Filipina workers to the Philippines.
The Philippine embassy in South Korea was not involved at all in the repatriation of the trafficked Filipinas. “Sa palagay ko, alam ng embassy dun pero pinagtatakpan (I think the embassy there knows but they’re covering it up),” says Nora.
Recruiters’ strategy
Ironically, it is now Nora who is on the defensive. She has been charged with perjury and falsification of public documents by her recruiter, which continues to send Filipina entertainers to South Korea despite a pending complaint against the agency before the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA).
Being used against Nora was the blank document signed by her mother who was told that this was a requirement for the quick deployment of her daughter to South Korea.
The day before her departure, Nora also signed a hand-written document stating that she owed her recruiter P30,000. The document stipulated her monthly salary would be $300 to be given on her seventh month at work with a three-month deduction as placement fee and reimbursement for other expenses.
“Ganyan talaga ang strategy ng recruiters. They file counter-charges at magtatagal ang kaso hanggang mag-settle na lang ang complainant. ’Yan ang problema sa ating judicial system. (That’s the usual strategy of recruiters. They file countercharges which prolong the case and force the complainant to go for a settlement. That’s the problem with our judicial system),” says Erwin Puhawan, a paralegal of the Kanlungan Center Foundation Inc., who helps Nora follow up her case.
Prosecutors abet the practice of settling even criminal cases, which is patently wrong, adds Puhawan, the only person who agreed to be identified in this story.
But the problem lies not just in the judicial system but also in the law itself. The Kanlungan paralegal says human-trafficking victims run the risk of violating the confidentiality clause of the anti-human trafficking law when they expose and identify illegal recruiters to warn others about the modus operandi. The law prohibits public disclosure of the name and personal circumstances of the trafficked person as well as of the accused.
But even without naming names and places, Nora’s experience in South Korea stands out for the boldness of her recruiter.
On the day that Nora and her companions arrived in Manila escorted by airport security, several personnel of the recruitment agency that deployed them were also at the airport waiting for their arrival. The victims had to hide from their recruiter’s staff to get out of the airport.
Source, transit, destination point
The Philippines has been identified in the 2010 US State Department trafficking report as a source, transit and destination point of human-trafficking victims. The same report noted the pervasive corruption in the country, which has allowed human trafficking to flourish with either the tacit or explicit permission of officials in government units and agencies assigned to combat the problem.
The Philippines has been on the State Department’s Tier 2 Watch List for two consecutive years, and was in danger of being downgraded this year to Tier 3 Watch List, which would mean a drastic cut on humanitarian and non-trade-related aid.
But the downgrade was averted with the rush of 22 convictions involving 23 human traffickers before the release of the State Department Human Trafficking Report for 2011 in June.
President Aquino recently announced that the Philippines would be removed from the Watch List although it would still be categorized under Tier 2. In this category are those governments that “do not fully comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.”
A $32-billion industry that victimizes 12.3 million adults and children around the world, human trafficking has been described as a form of modern-day slavery.
Bondage
Indeed, Nora and her companions were kept in bondage during their two-week stay in South Korea. Hired in Manila as singers of a band, they were required to wear sexy dresses and assigned to entertain inside private rooms where customers mashed their breasts and touched their genitals.
“Puros kabastusan ang nangyayari sa loob ng kwarto. Lahat po ng kababaihan dun ganun din ang ginagawa (All kinds of obscenities are happening in that room. They do these to all the women),” recalls Nora of her first day at the club.
Nora says they were made to greet guests by raising their skirts and pulling down their panties. Several times, customers forced Nora to dance naked, to masturbate and to perform oral sex on them. She could only cry while customers laughed at her misery and rage.
On their first day at work, Nora and her two companions decided that they would go back to the Philippines, but the question was how. They did not have money and escape seemed impossible.
Their South Korean employers confiscated their passports upon their arrival. They were always guarded and threatened with arrest. Two mamasans assigned to them warned that they, together with their parents, would be arrested if they escaped.
Their world outside of the nightclub was confined to a small room where they stayed before the daily grind started at 4 p.m. Work at the club usually ended around 4 to 6 a.m. or sometimes until 9 a.m. In one of the clubs where she was transferred, Nora noticed cameras all over the place. Their moves were closely monitored.
“Sobrang dami pong mga Pilipina dun (There are so many Filipinas there),” says Nora of the people she met and saw at work. Some of the Filipina “guest relations officers” or GROs working in the bars were also deployed by her local recruiter.
Still hoping
According to Nora, the South Korean nightclub owners did not let them go easily despite the intervention of a Malacañang official in the case. They were furious upon learning that Nora and her two companions were able to call up and inform their families in Manila about their situation.
They tried to convince the three Filipinas to stay, with a promise that they would be deployed to a different club. When the three stood their ground, one of the club owners threatened to kill them.
Before finally allowing the three Filipinas to go home, they were asked to sign a waiver stating that they were returning to the Philippines because they were homesick.
In Manila, Nora discovered at the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration that her real salary was $600 a month, not $300, and that her contract was for one year, not two years.
Nora has since found a job at a trading store in Manila, but is in danger of losing it because of her frequent absences.
“Lagi akong absent dahil inaasikaso ko ang anak ko na laging nagkakasakit at ’yung kaso ko (I’m always absent because I have to take care of my son who is often sick and I have to attend to the case),” she explains.
Still, Nora is not giving up hope. With the assistance of the nongovernment organization Kanlungan, she wants to pursue the criminal case against her recruiter. She hopes employers—and society in general—would be more sympathetic to trafficking survivors like her who fight for dear life almost daily.
(The audio slideshow was produced by Vincent Go as part of the training course, “Thinking Beyond Stills: A multimedia course for photojournalists,” by VERA Files, in partnership with the Canadian Embassy. The trainers were multi-awarded phojournalist Luis Liwanag and VERA Files trustees Luz Rimban and Yvonne Chua.)
Trafficking takes its toll on women | VERA Files http://t.co/ZTt85Oe
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