Editor’s note: This is the fifth and final post from guest blogger Carol Metzker. Carol is a longtime supporter of Free the Slaves. She recently visited our frontline work in India. In this series of articles, she writes about the Punarnawa ashram, a shelter for girls and women who are survivors of sex trafficking. Today, she talks about Community Vigilance Committees (CVC). Free the Slaves and our frontline partners have learned that a community that stays vigilant against predatory slave traffickers, tends to stay free. Learn more about our frontline programs here. And you can read Carol’s past blog posts here, here, here and here.
In a remote hamlet of India near the borders of Nepal and Bangladesh, villagers crowded under the eaves of thatched roofs and in the shade bamboo trees. They observed us as we sat on mats covering the ground. We met with men, from the hamlet and from a neighboring village, who gathered to discuss ways to protect their families against human trafficking and slavery.
Free The Slaves educators, their local partners, and an established Community Vigilance Committee (CVC) from a nearby area had stepped in after two 12-year-old boys from this community were trafficked with five other local boys the previous year. The boys were rescued before they had reached their intended work site in Delhi, but they needed help from a rehabilitation center for children rescued from slavery before returning home. The educators and concerned neighbors began to inform the villagers of their human rights and to teach them how to safeguard additional children from slavery.
With nearly no access to schooling, and freedom not guaranteed in the region, the villagers did not know that liberty is every human’s right. The families who gathered in the most humble setting—without benches, whiteboards, slide presentations, books or handouts—learned at the CVC meetings that children’s education is free and compulsory by law, that citizens are entitled to converse with elected leaders and that they are entitled to work at jobs that provide pay. These basic fundamentals provide a kind of inoculation against enslavement—protection from slavery’s root causes of illiteracy, poverty and vulnerability.
The man who headed the other village’s committee spoke to us. His son had been trafficked and rescued a few years earlier. Knowing firsthand the heartache of nearly losing a child, the father helped his own village committee become strong to guard its community members and then sought to help nearby communities learn to protect themselves.
Since the educators and other villagers’ committee had been working in the hamlet, not a single child had been trafficked. Families without food and out of work, in a village that already existed well below the poverty line, were getting assistance with food and finding access to healthcare. Villagers were becoming aware, educated and less vulnerable.
Thanks to Free the Slaves and the people who support its efforts, change is taking hold.
Tina Frundt, activist and last year's Fredrick Douglass Freedom Award Winner, speaks to a Cleveland audience about sex trafficking. Photo courtesy of Scott Shaw, The Plain Dealer
Last year’s recipient of the Fredrick Douglass Freedom Award, activist Tina Frundt, made headlines when she returned to Cleveland—the place she had been trafficked into sex slavery when she was just a teenager.
Frundt has been active in the fight against the multimillion dollar sex trafficking industry, starting her own anti-slavery non-profit called Courtney’s House—a place where services and resources are provided to survivors of the trade in Washington, D.C.
Frundt’s visit to Cleveland was covered by local newspaper The Plain Dealer. Check out the article below!
National activist fighting sex trafficking says she was first exploited in Cleveland
By Margaret Bernstein, The Plain Dealer
Tina Frundt doesn’t have happy memories of Cleveland. The former foster child arrived here from Chicago on her 14th birthday, in a car driven by a man who convinced her he loved her when no one else did.
She said she was taken to a house where four other teen girls lived and was raped by two men she didn’t know, beginning what would become more than a decade of being trafficked as a sex slave.
Skyline of Baku, Azerbaijan, where the USAID and OSCE signed an agreement last week to cooperate to combat modern-day slavery.
In this week’s news, several organizations have made attempts to not only aid the victims of human trafficking, but also to introduce new resolutions to combat slavery. Both New York’s Legal Aid Society and the U.N. Voluntary Trust Fund for Victims of Human trafficking launched projects to assist formerly trafficked humans through financial, humanitarian, and legal aid. Other efforts include global partnerships working to strengthen systems of justice internationally. Read below about these inspiring initiatives!
- Latimes.com: New sex-trafficking law in New York clears prostitute’s record: “A new New York law that recognizes minors forced into the sex trade as victims not criminals was used Wednesday to cleanse the record of a former Bronx prostitute.” After eight years under the control of pimps, twenty-two year-old Leni Johnson has shed her former convictions. In addition, New York’s Legal Aid Society “launched a pilot project focused on the comprehensive needs of women who are victimized at a young age.”
- Trend: The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and USAID join forces to combat modern-slavery in Azerbaijan: The United States Agency for International Development has signed a grant agreement with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to combat human trafficking. “The grant will also strengthen access to justice, fund legal resource centers in Sheki and Lankaran, and provide free legal assistance and information to the public.” U.S. Ambassador to Baku, Mathew Bryza, explained, “There is already strong cooperation between the U.S. and Azerbaijani governments in fighting this form of personal slavery.”
- Examiner.com: Fight against sex trafficking linked to immigration reform: National Immigration Reform has been deemed essential in fighting human trafficking. “Those who are either victims or witnesses are reluctant to report criminals for fear of being arrested themselves or deported,” allowing Arizona to become a hub for human trafficking. In other news, Mexico’s two most important newspapers have agreed to stop publishing sex ads, “a staple of the papers’ advertising revenue.”
- U.N. News Centre: World must do better to tackle human trafficking, stresses Assembly President: In the second ministerial meeting of the Group of Friends United Against Human Trafficking, Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser called “for redoubling efforts to ensure that the rights and freedoms of every person are upheld.” His proposed plan calls on the international community to adopt “good governance” and to provide debt relief, measures that should help limit the supply and demand for trafficking. The U.N. Voluntary Trust Fund for Victims of Human Trafficking launched a project to aid the victims of human trafficking.
Last month, Vanity Fair published a major investigative story on modern-day slavery in the U.S. ‘Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girls Next Door’ takes a look at domestic sex slavery—an illicit industry that preys on every-younger girls and boys (the average age that a person becomes a prostitute in the U.S. is 13).
Featuring interviews with several survivors of sex slavery, the article is not for the faint of heart. Writer Amy Fine Collins doesn’t pull any punches when she describes the torture and horrifying abuse endured by the victims. (You can read the article in full here.)
If ever there was a report in the mainstream media that might turn the tide of of pimp glamorization, this might be it. Fine writes:
“Criminals have learned, often in prison—where ‘macking’ memoirs such as Iceberg Slim’s Pimp are best-sellers—that it’s become more lucrative and much safer to sell malleable teens than drugs or guns. A pound of heroin or an AK-47 can be retailed once, but a young girl can be sold 10 to 15 times a day—and a ‘righteous’ pimp confiscates 100 percent of her earnings.” (Emphasis added by me.)
One survivor put it bluntly:
“Pimping… is not cool. A pimp is a wife beater, rapist, murderer, child-molester, drug dealer, and slave driver rolled into one.”
Read: ‘Tina Frundt Tells Congress: “Every Pimp has a Myspace page”‘
The article is well worth a read. It illustrates how a person can be trapped into slavery by invisible bars—their confidence crushed, physically brutalized, their trust in family and institutions broken. There are times when family members enslave other family members. Fine shows how pimps lure their victims by plying them with gifts and attention, then controlling them througah drugs and violence. Often, law enforcement personnel won’t recognize a victim of slavery. Sex slaves are arrested for prostitution or soliciting.
It is important to note, as you read this report, that sex trafficking is not the only form of modern-day slavery. Domestic servitude and forced labor also occur with alarming frequency in the U.S.—as documented in the book The Slave Next Door, written by FTS President Kevin Bales and historian Ron Soodalter. This Vanity Fair piece brings home the fact that slavery is not a remote problem. Our connection to it is very close. It’s happening in our own communities. Because this is an issue that affects us all, it is our responsibility to help end it.
Learn more about what you can do to join the movement to eradicate slavery here.
To help Free the Slaves continue our work, make a donation today.
Editor’s note: A few months ago, Marti MacGibbon sent us a copy of her memoir, ‘Never Give in to Fear.’ In one section of the book, she recounts her experience being trafficked from the U.S. to Tokyo, where she was forced into the sex trade. After a long road to recovery, MacGibbon is now a motivational speaker and substance abuse counselor, guiding others to self determination.
I am Marti MacGibbon, survivor of human trafficking. That I survived places me among the ranks of the lucky. In 1985, I was an emerging standup comic with a scheduled appearance on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. I thought I had it made – but soon became entangled in the San Francisco drug scene and developed an addiction, which made me vulnerable to traffickers.
I was trafficked from San Francisco to Tokyo and held in slavery for less than two months before a “customer” helped me to escape. Although brutal, demeaning and terrifying, the experience I lived through was mercifully brief. I am deeply grateful for my rescue, but the things that I endured have changed me forever. Yet I carry the realization that the happiness I experience today is not in spite of, but because of, the things I have overcome.
Rescue was only the beginning of my decades-long search for a safe place after such trauma. I suffered from post-traumatic stress. In those days, few resources were readily available. The term, “human trafficking” was not yet a part of the popular lexicon, and abolitionists had yet to gain the legislative victories of the ensuing decades. Distrust kept me from contacting the authorities; I dreaded reprisals from the traffickers.
I suffered in silence, desperately struggling to carry the pain, shame and fear that engulfed me. Nightmares ravaged my sleep. I used drugs in an attempt to manage my distress; my addiction nearly consumed me. For ten years, I could not find a safe place within myself.
But as I said, I am lucky. I eventually found love, recovery, self-acceptance, and healing. The first step in recovery from trauma is to find a safe place—first externally, then internally. Recovery from addiction was my first step to safety. With the help of support groups I learned valuable coping skills and stepped out of isolation.
I learned how to create a safe place within by allowing myself to study and utilize gratitude and serenity, then becoming conscious of the love and trust which binds the universe together. I engaged in therapy for PTSD, where I discovered how to create a safe place to heal, and how to use mindfulness meditation to manage fear.
As my healing progressed, I obtained education, training, and certification in substance abuse treatment. I’m dedicated to helping addicts break free, and devoted to the abolishment of modern slavery in all its forms. I have begun telling my story because I believe it may help to raise awareness about human trafficking and inspire others to join the fight.
Until I recounted the trauma in my memoir, ‘Never Give in to Fear,’ I’d kept my story secret. With healing, I came to believe that I needed to make my story known. Slavery is rampant today and fear and shame are the traffickers’ weapons. I will not be silenced by their arsenal. Finally, now that my book is out, the nightmares have ceased. My life is full of joy, love, and the optimism that courage brings.
I am deeply appreciative of Free the Slaves and other grass roots organizations for establishing safe places for those who have experienced misery and terror at the hands of traffickers. The goal of recovery is not merely to survive, but to thrive. Respect, consideration, dignity, and advocacy help lay the path to full recovery, and the people at Free the Slaves work hard to provide such resources.
In San Francisco, 2008, a protest of Chinese support for the Myanmar regime. Photo by BrokenSphere.
This week, the Global Post published a great article about human trafficking in Ruili, a city on the Chinese side of the border with Myanmar. The article, written Kathleen E. McLaughlin, says that China’s one child policy is fueling trafficking of women from poorer neighboring countries like North Korea and Myanmar into forced marriages.
Recently, we reported from a congressional hearing in which North Korean defectors spoke of being trafficked upon landing on Chinese soil. And worse yet, arrested and sent back to North Korea, where they were tortured. (Read ’90% of North Korean Defectors Sold to Chinese Traffickers, Advocate Says’). China is currently on the Tier 2 watch list on the latest Trafficking in Persons Report. And the Chinese government has made several high profile human trafficking busts in recent months (like this, this and this).
But critics, such as Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ) have said that China does not comply with the minimum standards prescribed by the Trafficking Victims Protections Act.
Read McLaughlin’s report (via Global Post):
At least 10,000 women from Myanmar live and work in the Ruili area, with varying degrees of legal status. Many are maids and nannies. Many more work in the sex trade. This is a hub of prostitution, and foreign women are both exotic — a big draw for Chinese men — and cheaper than Chinese girls. Prostitution halls are often disguised as massage parlors, but the sex trade is barely hidden.
Women lured from Myanmar to China fill a gap created by this country’s one-child policy and cultural preference for sons. By 2020, an estimated 35 million Chinese men will be unable to find wives. Increasingly, bachelors buy women from poorer countries like Myanmar and North Korea.
Watch video of the report after the jump!
India is hosting the Commonwealth Games for the very first time.
Recently, a new website has launched, focusing on modern day slavery. Human Goods, run by Seattle-based journalist Christa Hillstrom, takes a “big picture” look at slavery, putting it into global, economic, social and cultural context. We’ve been avidly reading Human Goods, because currently, there are very few media outlets that consistently produce magazine-style, feature length articles on human trafficking, and the movement to eradicate it.
Last week, Human Goods put out a thoughtful article on the 2010 Commonwealth Games, currently taking place in Delhi, India. This is the first time the games have been hosted in India. And, there are hopes that the event can showcase the asian nation as a “world class” country—an economic and cultural powerhouse. But the games have been shrouded in controversy. Child labor has contributed to the construction of stadiums and buildings, and sex trafficking has increased, to meet the demands of foreign tourists coming for the games.
Samir Goswami reports for Human Goods, in an article titled “Let the Games Begin”:
In 2008, the construction site was just a dusty field swarming with hundreds of men, many in tattered clothing and shorts, wearing boots and flimsy hard hats. Hundreds of thousands of visitors would one day go through the New Delhi airport they were rebuilding to attend the 2010 Commonwealth Games, hosted by India for the first time in a sweeping attempt to mold its 17-million-resident capital into a first-rate destination for the sporting fans of the world. For the next two years, the city would rumble with migrants and machines erecting stadiums, metro lines, hotels, and bridges, some of which were doomed to collapse before even being used. But this summer night, a Bobcat was the only piece of heavy machinery on the entire site.
Since the Indian government was spending millions on infrastructure improvements in anticipation of the CWG, my friend had decided to dabble in the construction business. In that typically adventurous and entrepreneurial spirit characteristic of many Delhi-ites, he bought himself a sub-contract to build an exterior wall for one of the new terminals at Indira Gandhi International Airport.
The prevailing wage for an unskilled laborer was 120 Indian Rupees per day ($2.60), and skilled workers earned 40 Rupees (90 cents) more. My friend, who provided about twenty-five of the hundreds of laborers for the section of the wall that he was sub-contracted to build, made a 20 percent profit over his costs. Later, I met the general contractor and asked, if the laborers were offered a better wage and the contractors increased safety precautions—would that not reduce both the financial and human cost of completing the project?
He replied, “Why should I invest in a Bobcat, and pay to train someone to run it, when I can just hire thirty men for half that cost to dig a hole?”
Digging a Hole
Two years later, Delhi finds itself in a hole of its own digging, the depth of which no one is yet quite sure of. From October 3 – 14 New Delhi is hosting the 19th Commonwealth Games, held every four years. Since 1930 the Games have been open to athletes from countries once under the colonial rule of Great Britain. According to the Commonwealth Federation (CGF), “Underlying every decision made by the CGF are three core values: HUMANITY – EQUALITY – DESTINY. These values help to inspire and unite millions of people and symbolize the broad mandate of the CGF within the Commonwealth.”
Another modern day slavery case has happened just stones throw away from the Free the Slaves west coast office. Hawthorne, CA man Leroy Bragg, 34 was arrested last week and charged with human trafficking, soliciting a minor, and pandering and procuring of a minor, among other crimes. Bragg reportedly also goes by aliases Edwards Quincy, and “Snipe King.”
Bragg was arrested on the evening of September 28 in Hawthorne, following a chase through a residential neighborhood, where he “jumped through yards and tried to break into homes to elude police,” the Daily Breeze reports. Bragg was apprehended after an LAPD investigation of South Los Angeles motels suspected of allowing prostitution. Police discovered two minors who said they had been kidnapped and forced into prostitution. Other reports say law enforcement was tipped off when one of the girls contacted the LAPD.
The father of one of the kidnapped girls said in a press conference this morning that his daughter was given a tattoo identifying her as the property the “Snipe King.” Sex traffickers branding their victims is a common practice.
Victims of sex trafficking are often afraid to come forward, fearing arrest and re-victimization. Regarding the arrest of Bragg, LAPD Detective Hector Sanchez said, ”When girls get exploited like this, they have a lot of things to worry about, so when they see the police a lot of times, even though we are there to rescue them, they are trained to dislike us by their pimp.”
2010 Frederick Douglass Freedom Award winner Tina Frundt is a survivor of sex trafficking. She says her trafficker taught her to fear the police, and told her she would be arrested and treated like a criminal. “And everything he said was true,” Tina says, “Everything.”
In a testimony at a recent congressional hearing on the sex trafficking of minors, Frundt described her experience:
“I am a survivor of child sex trafficking. I was 13 years old when I fell in love for the first time—he turned out to be a pimp. I was gang raped, psychologically manipulated, sold for sex, and beaten. I had a broken arm, broken finger, and broken spirit when the police found me at age 15 through a raid. Sadly, they arrested me and I spent one year in juvenile detention. Torture… this is the typical experience of a child sex victim.
Arrest rescued me from my pimp, but it gave me the label of delinquent. Detention gave me a year away from the daily rapes and beatings I was enduring, but it did not provide me with counseling or treatment for the trauma. I spent one year locked up and came out at the end with no referrals for services or assistance to rejoin a teenager’s life in America.”
Frundt is now an anti-slavery activist who founded her own hot line and advocacy organization, Courtney’s House.
Police say Leroy Bragg likely victimized “dozens” of other women and girls. If you have any information, contact Detective Hector Sanchez at 213.486.0957.
Blogging and anti-slavery come together as one! Via PR Web: First annual bloggers soiree to benefit anti-sex trafficking organization: “Bloggers and anti-human trafficking advocates will take over the Lower East Side Monday, September 27 at Libation NY for the First Annual Bloggers Soiree hosted by DesireeFrieson.com, RedRoverStyle.com and HerJourneyMag.com… 25% of proceeds from this event will go to benefit Restore NYC, a non-profit organization providing long-term aftercare services to international sex trafficked victims in the city. Last month, Restore NYC launched their ‘Brick by Brick’campaign which aims to raise $50,000 to build a safe house in New York City for sex trafficked survivors.”
- TDN.com: Exploited minors need our help, not punishment: Last week Linda Smith, founder of Shared Hope International testified at the House subcommittee on sex trafficking of minors. “Sex-trafficking victims, whose average initial exploitation age is 13, are often treated as juvenile delinquents or adult prostitutes by the criminal justice system. ‘Those who are identified as minors are frequently charged with a delinquent act, either prostitution-related activities or a related offense such as drug possession,’ Smith explained. That treatment, Smith added, only compounds the trauma of sexual violence the minor has already experienced.
- TheLedger.com: A South Florida couple guilty of human trafficking: “Sophia Manuel and Alfonso Baldonado Jr. schemed to force Filipino nationals to work in South Florida country clubs and hotels and threatened them with deportation. In exchange, they were offered little or no pay, and inadequate food or water.”
Lady Gaga was the biggest winner at the MTV Video awards Sunday night. She even won the most coveted prize of all: Video of the Year for ‘Bad Romance.’
The video’s mish-mash of symbolism has sparked much debate as to what it could all mean. One prevailing theory is that Lady Gaga is playing a sex slave, being bid on by the Russian mafia. She starts the video climbing out of a designer suit case. This presumably represents the “trafficking” part of her enslavement. The last shot of the video shows the pop star on a burnt down bed next to the charred corpse of her John—a sex slave’s revenge on her slave master.
Needless to say, not everyone is amused by Lady Gaga’s seemingly light hearted approach to a very real crime that ravages thousands of people every year. But there is no doubt that she has precipitated a certain amount of discourse on modern day slavery in venues not normally reserved for this topic. (Chicago Art Magazine and Technorati both ran feature-length essays on the ‘Bad Romance’ video, and its representation of sex trafficking.) One only wishes the discourse could have gone into more detail about what, exactly, modern day slavery looks like. How it encompasses more than just the flesh trade. How it can take a survivor years upon years to recover from the trauma. And how the crime can be eradicated—if only we educate ourselves, engage our communities and work to affect policy.
Learn how you can become part of the movement to end slavery.
But discourse is discourse. And Lady Gaga, in her own way, has contributed to raising awareness about human trafficking. It is our responsibility, once we learn of the existence of modern day slavery, to further educate ourselves. To learn more about what some are calling the human rights issue of our era, download Free the Slaves’ education pack.
