lost & found

From CNN's Freedom Project
By Sara Sidner, CNN 10/24/11

SVAY PAK, Cambodia (CNN) -- Svay Pak has a disturbing reputation. The village outside Cambodia's capital of Phnom Penh is known as a place where little girls are openly sold to foreign predators looking for sex.

One of the girls who was sold into the sex trade told CNN that before she could read she was working in a brothel.

"I was about five or six years old," she said. "The first man said to me, 'I want to have sex with you.' At the time I didn't know what to do. No one could help me."

Dozens of girls have had the same experience in her neighborhood.

She says she was approached by a man while playing outside. He asked her to come over and talk to him, and before she knew it she was alone and being asked for sex. Some of the girls were actually sold into the sex trade by their own parents.

Many were housed with other girls her age in what looked like a cell. The room was pink had thick walls and no windows and was about 7 feet long by 7 feet wide. There were several rooms just like it stuffed into a building that had a gate over the front door and bars on the bathroom window. The brothel she lived in specialized in pre-pubescent girls.

The young girls were sought after by the foreign men who came to the area for one reason: They knew they could find young girls for sale.


"At the beginning they talked to me gently but when they raped me, they also beat me up," the former sex slave said, her head bowed and tears rolling from her eyes uncontrollably.

She is now 18 and no longer trapped in a terrible and painful life. Three years ago she found a safe haven after Don Brewster and his wife moved into the neighborhood and began operating a rehabilitation center for child sex slaves.

"I really think it's an evil -- I mean there is no understanding it. The girls, I mean, they're in such pain and suffer so greatly and it is obvious to the man that's raping them," Brewster said.

Brewster says things have changed in Svay Pak in the past several years. It used to be girls who hung out in the open, beckoning from behind barred windows to the men who walked by. Pimps no longer descend on every foreign man who shows up in the neighborhood offering to sell them virgins. While the situation is changing, there is still a nasty underbelly in the area, but travelers have to go looking for it now. The sex trade has gone underground, but it is still there.

"If you just look on the surface you would say that doesn't happen but just yesterday we rescued a 5-year-old girl here in Svay Pak," said Brewster, who works with Agape International Missions.

Now there is a place that provides a secure environment for children to just be children.

From www.internationlsupermarketnews.com
By Laura Elliot

US retail giant Walmart has shocked many with the announcement that from next spring, the company will begin selling handcrafted products made my women in developing countries. To begin with, the items will only be available to buy online, but by 2016 the retailer plans to offer up to 500 items made by more than 20,000 female artisans across two dozen countries. The move will certainly please urban liberals, who are uncomfortable with the company’s current business practices.  Among the handmade offerings available to be bought on Walmart.com, there will be dresses from Kenya, and jewellery from Guatemala and Thailand. Although many will see this new proposal as a good thing, Walmart’s announcement has been met with concern by importers and retailers, who say that they follow the precepts of fair trade.

“It certainly does seem in sharp contrast to Wal-Mart’s typical business model,” said Michele Loeper, a spokeswoman at the Akron, Pa. headquarters for Ten Thousand Villages, the Nation’s oldest and largest fair trade retailer.

“I’m not sure what their model will be,” Loeper said. “From our point of view we work with the artisans to identify a fair income, one that will benefit them and be sustainable. We’re the anti-Wal-Mart, a nonprofit company dedicated to providing sustainable income opportunities to artisans in developing countries — I doubt that’s what Wal-Mart is doing here.”

At the moment, the supermarket giant plans to acquire a number of products from Ethical Fashion Africa and Full Circle Exchange, a programme that is part of the International Trade Centre. The ITC is an agency which was grown from a partnership between the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation.

Leslie Dach, Executive Vice-President of Corporate Affairs at Walmart, said in a statement that their website is an “ideal venue” for artisans, who “may not have the size or scale to sell in our brick-and-mortar stores”. She went on to say that the new scheme gives them “the benefit of the company’s knowledge about customers, packaging and promotions”.

However, History Professor and author of “The Retail Revolution: How Wal-mart Created a Brave New World of Business”, Nelson Lichtenstein, has questioned the retailer’s motives.

He said in a statement that the US company would “make some money with this, but I suspect that’s not the main point — it’s public relations to soften its image among urban liberals.”

It is well know that this segment of the consumer market embraces an agenda that includes environmental issues, microfinance and the empowerment of women, Professor Lichtenstein went on to say. Reaching their hearts and their pocketbooks could mean making significant inroads for Walmart into some very desirable urban markets.

“Wal-Mart has been desperately trying to get into San Francisco, Boston and New York,” Lichtenstein commented, and it is well known that The Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer only recently entered Chicago after a series of long battles with organised labour and political leaders.

Handcrafted items typically appeal to higher income shoppers, and this is a demographic that, according to Lichtenstein, Walmart is hoping to attract. However, the Professor of History said that he wonders whether Walmart – which has a reputation for “squeezing” suppliers – may ultimately end up pressuring artisans to step-up production, thereby “eroding the handmade aspect” of their scheme.

Short URL: http://www.internationalsupermarketnews.com/?p=5238

By Margaret Bernstein, The Plain Dealer
published 10/13/11

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 livedand was raped by two men she didn't know, beginning what would become more than a decade of being trafficked as a sex slave.

"How do you get out when you have no resources to get out?" Frundt, now in her 30s, asked an audience of about 250 Thursday at the Human Services Institute, an annual conference on health, social and economic issues hosted by the Center for Community Solutions.

"It took me many years, which is why I started Courtney's House," a program that rescues and provides resources and shelter to trafficking survivors in Washington, D.C., Frundt said.

She is also a leader in efforts to end the multimillion-dollar sex trafficking industry. Frundt trains law enforcement officials and nonprofit groups to rescue and provide resources to victims.

Sex trafficking, Frundt said, is frequently dismissed as a foreign problem, allowing it to grow unchecked.

"Here we label it something else. We say it's prostitution, it's pimping," Frundt said.

But it's actually the marketing and selling of children, she said. Teens and even younger children are pulled in regularly to work as prostitutes, in strip clubs and to produce child porn, according to Frundt.

It's supply and demand economics at work, "and unfortunately the demand is for our children," Frundt said. Until society wakes up and views it that way, she added, children will continue to be exploited.

Frundt grew up in foster care until she was adopted at age 12, and said she was an easy mark when she gained the attention of a man who said he wanted to take her on a trip.

She wasn't a runaway, she said. But at age 14, she was too fearful and inexperienced to know how to escape.

She said many sex traffickers have multiple homes in different cities so they can spirit youngsters away from their hometowns.

"It's been going on in front of our noses. We don't know what to look for," Frundt said.

Renee Jones, who volunteers her time to operate a local outreach and advocacy program for sex trafficking victims, said she was grateful to see the issue given so much attention at the event, held at La Centre in Westlake.

"She's not making this up. This stuff is real," she said of Frundt's presentation.

Cleveland needs a specialized shelter similar to Courtney's House where survivors can recover from trauma and can be protected from sex traffickers, Jones said.

"I have victims being brought to me, and they have no where to go."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: mbernstein@plaind.com, 216-999-4876

According to estimates by policymakers, activists and scholars the number of modern day slaves ranges from about 10 million to 30 million people.

But how many of those slaves work for you? Now that is the unsettling question being posed by a new online tool and mobile app. It's called Slavery Footprint. It's the latest initiative from the anti-slavery Call + Response campaign in partnership with the U.S. State Department.

It allows consumers to measure to what extent they are complicit in the use of forced labor around the world. (Learn more about the tool and technology's "slavery" problem from CNNMoney.com)

CNN talked to Justin Dylan, who leads the Call + Response campaign, for more information about the app.

CNN: What do you hope to achieve with the Slavery Footprint app?

DYLAN: Well, with Slavery Footprint what we didn't want to do is create another calculator that only spits out bad news. What I believe is that people carry around stories and not necessarily statistics. So with Slavery Footprint we actually wanted to be able to tell you the story of your life and how it fits in with the globalized economy.

Today, slavery is worse now than it ever was before, but most people have a hard time of understanding how it affects their lives. Slavery footprint is the first chapter for most people in understanding how it directly affects their lives, but most importantly about what they can do to change it.

CNN: Now you worked with the U.S. State Department to create this app. What kind of support did they give you?

DYLAN: Well, they were phenomenal not only in their sharing of knowledge, but they helped the beginning of the funding of the app and really were able to use a lot of their relational equity to be able to bring the right kind of experts and stakeholders to bare on this.

The technology that we've created and the algorithm that we've created around Slavery Footprint is a very vetted and multi-stakeholder approach where we're able to use vetted data to be able to determine the slavery in different types of products that we use every day while being very brand agnostic. We don't go after any particular brand, we're talking about different types of products that you use every day, which is very important.

CNN: Now this new app, it follows the Call + Response app as well as your documentary of the same name. So do you feel that consumers are taking notice? Do you feel that the concept of buying slave free is really gaining traction now?

DYLAN: Well, I think we're getting there. I think we've just lit the fuse on the rocket. What's really going to make the rocket take off is if a consumer start to embed the story of other people who are being exploited to produce their lifestyles. If consumers can start to absorb that, that story into their lives, and more importantly amplify that story in the marketplace.

From Atika Shubert, CNN  Sept
CNN's Laura Perez Maestro contributed to this report.

London (CNN) -- British investigators were questioning suspects Monday after police rescued 24 men that they said were kept as slaves -- some for as long as 15 years.

Police in Bedfordshire, northwest of London, arrested five suspects under a new anti-slavery law passed last year, alleging that they lured the men to a trailer park with promises of food and shelter, then threatened them with violence and forced them into hard labor.

The men, from England and parts of Eastern Europe, are "all believed to be victims of slavery," police said. Living in squalid conditions in the town of Leighton Buzzard, many of the men were on the verge of starvation, police said.

"There's no electricity. There's no running water. People haven't had their hair cut. (They're) wearing dirty clothing. And made to perform labor, rather than being given proper food and proper wages for their labors," said Detective Chief Inspector Sean O'Neil of Bedfordshire Police.

Tips from other alleged victims who had managed to escape the site led to a lengthy investigation that culminated in Sunday's raid, police said.

Bedfordshire Police issued a statement Monday saying that four of the five people in custody were being questioned. The fifth is a woman who "is pregnant and has been released on police bail and will be questioned further following the birth of her child which is imminent," the statement said.

Police identified the four men arrested as three brothers -- James Connors, 23, Tommy Connors, 26, and Patrick Connors, 19 -- and their brother-in-law, James Conner, 33. The four are scheduled for a court hearing Tuesday morning and will be held in custody until that hearing, police said.

Nine of the men rescued in the raid have left a medical reception and "have chosen not to support the police investigation," Bedfordshire Police said in the statement Monday.

"Those people who we continue to help are appreciative of the support that is on offer, but it will take some time to work through with them what has happened," O'Neil said in a statement.

Investigators are searching for two additional suspects, Bedfordshire Police said.

According to the United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre, which assisted Bedfordshire Police in Sunday's operation, nearly 1,500 cases of slavery and human trafficking have been reported to British police in the past two years.

A new anti-slavery law passed last year in Britain means that anyone convicted of holding a person in servitude can spend up to 14 years in prison.

From CNN's Freedom Project

How can technology be used to fight human trafficking? It's the question technology leaders, including Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey, will try to answer in an anti-slavery forum in the Silicon Valley next month.

Steven Rice from Juniper Networks, the summit host, talked to CNN's Richard Quest about the summit and the role of technology in the anti-slavery fight.

QUEST: What will your fundamental message be for how the summit, how technology, how it can all be made to work to the benefit [to end slavery]?

RICE: We believe that technology, the technology that Juniper Networks builds around bridging and connecting devices, information and content, and linking that to the work that Not For Sale is doing is absolutely at the heart of how do we start to lead and drive innovation around ending world slavery.

QUEST: All right, Steven, I understand the principle. And I understand what you're saying. And it sounds very good. But how are you going to do it? What does it involve?

RICE: Well, it's a movement. And we believe that if you give individuals the power to make choices at a consumer level, that you will make the right choices based on a set of criteria that Not For Sale is driving supply chains around the world, being able to create jobs for individuals in these countries where individuals can actually start to build lives and capabilities that don't exist today.

And the form allows spot leaders from this area to come together, talk about not only what's being done today, but also, what are some of those strategies that we can use technology to drive innovation and bring people together in different ways than they've had in the past.

QUEST: Isn't one of the real issues here ... CEOs of manufacturing companies, of different groups - they pay lip service, but they don't want to take a stand. They don't want to come out and be brutal and say this is what we believe in and what we're not going to do.

RICE: And that's why I think that Not For Sale is doing a very grassroots effort, working with companies like Juniper Networks to come in and help us actually survey and understand our supply chains in a new and different way that allows us to actually walk the talk. And I do think that's the way that Juniper Networks is bridging that, in the way they're approaching that problem, with many manufacturers. I do think it's a breakthrough.

QUEST: What's your barometer of success for this summit and for this meeting? How will you judge whether or not you've actually made a difference?

RICE: I believe that the 1,000 plus individuals that we're bringing to Silicon Valley, in the heart of innovation and creativity, that some of the measures for us are, one, how do we truly appreciate and understand what the global reach and challenges that the world faces today around human trafficking. That's one.

How do we bring leaders like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Jack Dorsey from Twitter, Jeremy Affleck, the San Francisco Giants, as well as Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York - bringing those individuals together that can actually influence and help drive change that's required across the world.

By STEVE HUNTER
Kent Reporter Courts, government reporter
Sep 03 2011

There's reportedly plenty of money in promoting prostitution in Kent and the Seattle area, according to charging documents filed against a 32-year-old Seattle man.

Shacon Fontane Barbee is scheduled to go to trial Sept. 19 in Kent for promoting prostitution, leading organized crime, promoting commercial sexual abuse of a minor (under age 18) and several other charges.

Barbee allegedly made at least $192,000 as a pimp during one eight-month period, according to charging papers filed against Barbee in July by King County prosecutors.

A then 19-year-old prostitute told detectives that she earned about $2,000 per week mainly from working along Pacific Highway South in Kent and Denny Way in Seattle. She gave all of that money to Barbee.

"Based on those figures, if (she) earned $2,000 a week, she alone would have given Barbee approximately $64,000 in the eight months she worked for him," detectives wrote in the charging documents. "If Barbee had two other females working for him at that time, he would have taken in about $192,000. This is a very modest estimate. This number is based on figures that other girls, who were posting (ads) online, only earned $2,000 each week. (She) believed they earned far more than that."

Barbee pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. The charges include three counts of promoting commercial sexual abuse of a minor; first-degree promoting prostitution; second-degree promoting prostitution; and leading organized crime. He also is charged with three counts of first-degree theft in connection with wrongfully obtaining money from the Social Security Administration and one count of tampering with a witness.

Barbee is set for trial Sept. 19, but that date could be delayed if attorneys from either side ask for more time to prepare the case, according to Ian Goodhew, spokesman for the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office.

The most serious charges against Barbee are leading organized crime and promoting commercial sexual abuse of a minor, Goodhew said.

"He could face up to 15 years if convicted of all counts but we could also ask for an exceptional (sentence) above that amount if the jury finds aggravating factors," Goodhew wrote in an email.

Barbee allegedly started pimping in January 2007 and had more than 40 women who worked for him, according to charging papers.

He remains in the county jail at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent with bail set at $500,000.

Police sting leads to arrest

The case against Barbee broke when Kent detectives arrested him at about 11:30 p.m. Dec. 3 in the 6000 block of South 212th Street for investigation of commercial sexual abuse of a minor and promoting prostitution.

A special investigations unit of the Kent Police conducted a prostitution sting Dec. 3 at the Hampton Inn, 21109 66th Ave. S. An undercover officer responded to an online ad to hire an escort at www.backpage.com, a popular website where prostitutes are known to advertise their services, according to charging documents.

Backpage.com is the company that received an Aug. 31 letter signed by 46 state attorney generals, including Rob McKenna of Washington, "to substantiate (by Sept. 14) company claims it can effectively limit prostitution and sexual trafficking activity on its website, especially ads that could involve minors," according to a National Association of Attorneys General media release.

Officers recognized the girl in the online ad because she had been contacted in March 2010 during a prostitution investigation in Kent. Officers knew she was just 17 years old. They also knew through cellphone numbers that the girl had connections to Barbee.

An undercover officer rented a hotel room and responded to the ad for the girl to come to the room as an escort at a cost of $150 for 30 minutes. The girl agreed to the deal.

Detectives outside the hotel reportedly spotted Barbee drive the girl to the hotel entrance in a Toyota Avalon and drop her off.

As one undercover officer waited for the girl inside the room, two other officers hid in the room's closet. Once the girl agreed to accept cash from the undercover officer in return for sex, the two officers emerged from the closet and arrested the girl for investigation of prostitution.

After Barbee had dropped off the girl, he waited in his vehicle in a parking lot near the hotel. After the prostitution arrest of the girl inside the hotel, officers approached his vehicle in unmarked cars when Barbee started to drive way. They followed him westbound on South 212th Street and eventually pulled him over at the KOA Campground and arrested him for investigation of promoting prostitution.

Building a case

With Barbee in custody, detectives started to build a case against him that led to further charges being filed in July. Kent Police worked with King County Sheriff's Office detectives who had been investigating Barbee as a pimp in connection with prostitution activity at a SeaTac hotel.

Barbee allegedly rented a room at the hotel for women working for him to use as a place to meet men who responded to online ads for escorts.

Overall, Kent Police interviewed four women who allegedly worked for Barbee as prostitutes. The women include:

• An 18-year-old who claimed she had been associated with Barbee since she was 13 and began working for him at age 16. Barbee reportedly paid for online ads and hotel rooms for the woman and transported her to the "dates." The woman also helped line up other women to work for Barbee.

• A 19-year-old who met another prostitute through a message on myspace.com and then started to text each other. The woman later met Barbee at a Motel 6 near Sea-Tac Airport. She told police that Barbee put her up in a motel room and that she would average about five or six "dates" per day from men who saw her online ad at backpage.com.

• A 20-year-old who Kent Police arrested for investigation of prostitution in March 2010 and later connected her phone with calls from Barbee. She told officers she met Barbee through another prostitute and worked for him for about eight months. She mainly worked street prostitution in Kent and Seattle.

• An 18-year-old who said she worked for Barbee for one night in the spring of 2010 as part of a two-girl special with another woman at a SeaTac hotel. She told detectives she didn't work more than one night because Barbee really didn't care about her and he had a violent reputation.

Cars, lingerie and cash

When sheriff's office deputies investigated a SeaTac hotel room reportedly used by women who worked for Barbee, they discovered guest registration signed by Barbee listed two of his cars, a Jaguar XJR and a Mercedes S420. The registration form also had a copy of Barbee's driver's license attached.

A search warrant of the room led to finding a letter written by one of the women to Barbee about how much she liked working for him; online postings; sex toys; condoms; and lingerie. Many of the women wore lingerie in the online ads.

King County prosecutors served a subpoena to the custodian of record for backpage.com and found out through credit card records that Barbee and an associate had paid for 91 postings on the site. Barbee spent approximately $637 on backpage.com for online ads during a seven-month period.

Barbee would use text messages to communicate with women he groomed to work for him, according to charging documents. He would give them tips on how to manipulate a man, including one message with the title "Why does a hoe need a pimp?"

Barbee would often wake up at noon and be out on the streets until 2 a.m.. He would take the women shopping for clothing, lingerie and shoes. He paid for one of the women to get her nails done every other week at the cost of $30 and her hair done once a month at a cost of $100.

In April, Kent detectives executed a search warrant at a Burien storage unit rented by Barbee and reportedly found numerous documents and videos related to pimping and prostitution; large amounts of female lingerie; a garbage bag with monthly bills and phone lists belonging to Barbee; Gucci (an Italian fashion and leather goods label) receipts totaling totaling $10,806 over a 13-month period; and a safe with $18,300 in cash.

Criminal history

Barbee has juvenile convictions for second-degree attempted rape of a child in 1996; taking a motor vehicle once in 1996 and four times in 1995. He has adult convictions for failing to register as a sex offender in 1998 and 2006; unlawful possession of a firearm in 1999; communicating with a minor for immoral purposes in 1999; possessing stolen property in 1998; and taking a motor vehicle in 1997.

Kent Reporter Courts, government reporter Steve Hunter can be reached at shunter@kentreporter.com or 253-872-6600, ext. 5052.

From CNN's Freedom project. CNN's Misty Showalter


Emmanuel Otoo is a man with a simple message: Poverty is not a reason to sell children into slavery.

For many people, that's a pretty obvious sentiment. But if you come from Otoo's background, it's easy to see why he would say that. He's the Ghana Director for the non-profit group Free the Slaves, and it's his mission to make parents understand that selling their children isn't going to bring anyone a better life.

Otoo has a lot to be thankful for, and he mostly credits his mother for not making the choice that so many families around him in Ghana made when he was a child.

"We observe a lot of situations currently where out of poverty, out of need, out of desire to give their children the basic necessities, parents tend to traffic their children - give them out or sell them out," he told CNN. "So I compare this to our relationship with our mother that in spite of the difficult times, in spite of the lack, the need, and the want, she did not give us out. She could've done that, but she did not."

Otoo's mother kept the family together, and he went on to college, majoring in sociology and earning a master's degree in business administration. But instead of taking his education and moving away, Otoo stayed where he felt he was needed most - in the heart of some of the worst areas for trafficking in his country. One of the sites is Lake Volta, where he documents child slavery in the fishing industry.

"Children are put on canoes, they work long hours. And to help you understand long hours - long hours is over 12 hours. Some work 16 hours," he said. "And they perform various forms of activities, from casting nets to dragging nets, emptying water in the boat, and diving deep into the water to disentangle nets. Children dive into the water and some of them do not return again. That is the last time some of them are seen."

It is dangerous work to fight a practice that can be very profitable for the traffickers. But the peril means nothing to Otoo, who is driven in part by his two young children.

“The danger is there, we receive death threats, people who don't like what we're doing. Others come up to you and actually warn you to stop doing what you're doing," he said. "But my motivation is the fact that I would've ended up as one of the people who was enslaved so if I am lucky to escape, I believe that I have a huge responsibility to contribute all that I can within me to make sure that this unacceptable practice ends.”

Otoo is one of several directors working in seven countries for Free the Slaves. The directors conduct research, provide education and bring together community groups from other non-profits, churches and schools. They're not just trying to  free slaves - though that is their obvious goal - but they say making sure the community can make a change is the foundation for ending slavery.

"You meet families who are not rich families, don't have cars to drive in or other things, but they have their families back," said Otoo. "They have their children back, and they sit happily, chat, eat and give the children opportunity to play. And that is a success story for me."

Free the Slaves has headquarters just outside of Los Angeles and in Washington. They are one of hundreds of non-profit groups fighting human trafficking, and they bring these groups together every year for what co-founder Peggy Callahan calls "the largest anti-slavery gathering in the world." Their annual Freedom Awards honor people working to free slaves, handing out awards ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 for the recipient's organization

The group also documents anti-slavery work done around the world, to show others that the fight can be won.

By Carrie Wood, KIRKLAND REPORTER Published 10:45 p.m., Saturday, August 27, 2011
Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/sound/article/Survivor-of-human-trafficking-and-sex-slavery-on-2144670.php#ixzz1WQEVExfA

A Russian mob had taken her identity long ago inside a dark warehouse. But now, on a sunny afternoon, the Korean-American walked past the long white trailers that lined Seventh Street in the Norkirk neighborhood, stopping at her dressing room marked with her name - Chong Kim.

A film crew assistant invited Kim to the set - the inside of a Kirkland house - and asked her if she needed a chair. Another worker brought her a coke. Cast members, hair dressers and makeup artists introduced themselves.

Kim felt like a celebrity.

But amidst the glitz and glam of filmmaking, Kim was confronted with a stark past.

The movie, "Eden," that was partially being filmed in Kirkland Thursday was inspired by her true story as a survivor of domestic human trafficking and sexual slavery. The film stars actress Jamie Chung and actor Beau Bridges.

Eden Productions was on its 13th day of shooting the feature film, which is being shot entirely in Washington State.

Kim came to Kirkland from Texas to meet the producers for the first time on Thursday.

"It's just so unreal," she said as she watched actors clad in shiny black pants and netted shirts disappear inside the house to play their parts.

"Rolling!" A crew member called.

Kim was 19 when she was trafficked and forced into sexual slavery in 1995. She was studying law enforcement at a technical college in Dallas when she met a soldier at a bar.

"He pretended to be my boyfriend," she recalled.

The man kidnapped Kim, chained her up in the basement of an abandoned house in Oklahoma and destroyed all of her documents. He threatened her and said if she left she would lose her rights and be treated like an illegal alien.

After escaping, a woman from an escort service offered to help. She told Kim she would get paid to go on dates with men. Once she accepted the job, she was raped and sold to who she refers to as her "master" in Las Vegas.

"My traffickers were organized criminals," she explained. "I lived in a distribution warehouse - it wasn't like a brothel or a massage parlor."

In the warehouse, woman and young girls slept on old mats.

"It was kind of like a human market," Kim said, noting women were forced to service up to 35 men per day. "The girls were tapped on the shoulder to be marketed out. Sometimes the girls came back - sometimes they didn't."

During her two-plus years of sexual exploitation, she was transported with about 50 other girls from warehouse to warehouse throughout the country.

Time did not exist.

"When you are being held, there is no clock, no light," she said. "There were times when it would feel like it was forever."

She eventually became a madam and escaped in 1997. "I had to rank up in order to get out," she said, noting her frustration with people asking her why she didn't escape sooner. "It's not like I wanted to be a madam - I did it with the intent to get out."

It took several years for Kim to realize what happened to her. She was interning as a legal advocate for a law firm in 2003 when she heard a Russian woman talk about her human trafficking experience.

"I didn't think of it as human trafficking. In the 90s, we didn't hear of trafficking," said Kim. When she heard the woman's story "I said, 'oh my gosh - she's telling my story.'"

Kim started to speak out about her experience. That is when Seattle native Rick Philips saw a newspaper article and contacted her in 2005. With Kim's help via email, Philips wrote and completed the script four years later.

Colin Plank, who is co-producing the movie with Jacob Mosler - both Seattle natives - said most of the film crew are local. Director Megan Griffith is also from Seattle.

He noted the film is funded in part by a non-profit organization, Washington Filmworks, which supports the state's film industry. Eden Productions is shooting the film in-state for 25 days. Earlier in the week, the company filmed outside footage in Ellensburg and on Friday they moved to Lynwood to shoot a scene at a warehouse.

Plank said Kirkland was a good location for the film because it is quiet and also has ample street parking.

Location manager Dave Drummond arranged to have an interior scene filmed inside Will Diefenbach's Kirkland home. A Microsoft Corp. employee, Diefenbach's home was also the site of a Microsoft commercial, Plank said.

"The part of the film we are shooting today is set in the mid-90s, so his home fits in that genre easily," he said on Thursday.

Kim said she was amazed that the film is coming to fruition and was overwhelmed with the crew's support.

Now 36, she lives in Texas with her husband and son. She has visited universities around the country to speak about her personal story. She has also worked with law enforcement and political officials with the goal of strengthening the advocacy system that reaches out to victims of trafficking.

Officials estimate between 14,500-17,500 people - mostly women and children - are trafficked in the U.S. each year.

Washington was the first state to criminalize human trafficking in 2003. King County prosecuted the state's first human trafficking case in 2009 involving a West Seattle street gang, according to news reports.

But Kim still sees cases where human trafficking victims are tried as prostitutes.

"Many people don't know how to save these girls if they don't know what to look for," she said.

Aside from public speaking, Kim is also a children's advocate for Hoby. There are times, she says, when she has to "get away from the whole trafficking topic."

But when she's confronted with a tough situation, she still calls on her past.

"I hear kids all the time say, 'I'll never amount to anything,' and I tell them, 'If I've been through this, then you can get through this too.'"

More information

For more information about the film, visit www.theedenfilm.com/. To learn more about Chong Kim, visit www.chongkim.net.


Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/sound/article/Survivor-of-human-trafficking-and-sex-slavery-on-2144670.php#ixzz1WQFQGKdK


Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/sound/article/Survivor-of-human-trafficking-and-sex-slavery-on-2144670.php#ixzz1WQDvqRKr

From the Trafficking In Persons Report 2011
Victims' Stories
Office To Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons

The victims’ testimonies included in this report are meant to be representative only and do not include all forms of trafficking that occur. Any of these stories could take place anywhere in the world. They illustrate the many forms of trafficking and the wide variety of places in which they occur. No country is immune. Many of the victims’ names have been changed in this report. Most uncaptioned photographs are not images of confirmed trafficking victims, but they show the myriad forms of exploitation that define trafficking and the variety of cultures in which trafficking victims are found.

Moldova-UAE
Olga, 23, came to Dubai from Moldova on a visitor visa after hearing about a job opportunity there. A Russian woman and an Indian man picked her up at the airport when she arrived. They took her to their apartment and told her she would instead be prostituted. When she refused, they beat her and threatened to kill her and bury her in the desert. They threatened to harm her if she did not pay them back for her travel expenses, and then sent Olga to a local hotel to meet customers and collect money from them. After two weeks, Olga met another woman from Moldova in the hotel and told her about her condition. The woman advised her to report her situation to the police, who raided the apartment and arrested the suspected traffickers.

Bangladesh-Libya
Mansur sold family land to pay a Dhaka employment agency that promised him well-paying work in Libya. When he and some 40 other Bangladeshi workers landed at the Tripoli airport, two men from the agency met them and immediately took away their passports. The agents then took the workers to an abandoned warehouse in a suburb of Tripoli and told them to wait there. They threatened to deport the men if they disobeyed. Not able to speak any language other than Bangla, Mansur and the others remained in that warehouse for two months, helpless and nearly starving. When the agents finally took the men to work, they deducted more than half of the promised monthly salaries for food and accommodation. When fighting erupted in Libya in February, Mansur and the group of Bangladeshi workers fled with whatever little money they had managed to save. The men were robbed and joined more than 10,000 other Asian and African migrant workers at a refugee camp near the Tunisia-Libya border, waiting to go home empty handed after years of toil.

Mauritania
Mattalla spent most of his life as a slave. He often watched his owners beat his mother and sisters. When he protested, they beat him too. Matalla’s job was to take care of livestock and make charcoal. His family lived in a small area of the owners’ settlement surrounded by cloth. They were given no food except for the occasional leftovers and often cooked and ate lizards they caught in the desert. Escape in the Sahara would almost always lead to death by hunger or thirst or at the hands of slave owners who would find them. Mattalla was beaten if he lost a camel, if he sat on the same mat as his owners, or if he disobeyed them. When Mattalla met some soldiers on the road, he told them he’d rather be shot dead than return to his owners. The soldiers helped him escape and receive support from a local NGO. His family remained with the owners.

USA
Alissa, 16, met an older man at a convenience store in Dallas and after a few dates accepted his invitation to move in with him. But soon Alissa’s new boyfriend convinced her to be an escort for him, accompanying men on dates and having sex with them for money. He took her to an area known for street prostitution and forced her to hand over all of her earnings. He made Alissa get a tattoo of his nicknames, branding her as his property, and he posted prostitution advertisements with her picture on an Internet site. He rented hotel rooms around Dallas and forced Alissa to have sex with men who responded to the ads. The man, who kept an assault rifle in the closet of his apartment, threatened Alissa and physically assaulted her on multiple occasions. The man later pled guilty to trafficking Alissa.

Peru
Karina was 19 when Nestor, an acquaintance from her neighborhood, offered her a job at a restaurant in the capital. Karina thought it was a great opportunity for her to leave her small town and earn her own income. She went to Lima with Nestor and began to work as a waitress in a seafood restaurant. She soon fell in love with Nestor’s friend Edy, who, after gaining Karina’s trust, forced her to have sex with men in various Lima nightclubs. Edy then moved Karina around among nightclubs in various cities, including one in her own home town, for two years. With a friend’s help, Karina managed to escape and returned to her family. Edy continued to call her with threats and demands. He also started threatening the friend who helped Karina escape. Although she has filed a police report against Edy and has the support of a public attorney, Karina continues to live in fear, without any protection for herself or her family.

Honduras-USA
Maira was 15 when two well-dressed men driving a nice car approached her and two friends in a small Honduran village. They told the girls they were businessmen and offered to take them to the United States to work in a textile factory. Maira thought it was the perfect opportunity to help her single mother, who struggled to support seven children.

But upon arriving in Houston, the girls were held captive, beaten, raped, and forced to work in cantinas that doubled as brothels. Men would come to the cantina and choose a beer and a girl, sometimes as young as 12. They would pay for the beer and sit with the girl while she drank it. If they wanted to have sex with the girl, they would take her to the back and pay cash for a mattress, paper towels, and spermicide. The captors beat the girls daily if they did not make enough money.

After six years, Maira was able to escape the cantina and return to her mother with the help of a kind American family. Her two friends remain missing

Middle East-UK
Amita came to London from the Middle East as a domestic servant for a family that treated her well and paid her decently. When her employer moved into a high-level job that provided house staff, the family no longer needed Amita. They helped her find work with another family. Amita’s new employers took her passport as soon as she arrived and made her sleep on the floor in the living room to prevent her from stealing things and hiding them in her room. They did not pay her or allow her out of the house, and they threatened to report her to the police as an illegal if she tried to run away. Amita worked in the family’s house from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. After that, she was taken to clean various office buildings until midnight or early morning. One night, the employer’s son and his friends were drunk in the house and attempted to rape Amita. After that, she decided to run away and managed to escape with the help of a security guard.

DRC
The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), an armed group that originated in northern Uganda 20 years ago, now operates in the border areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), South Sudan, and the Central African Republic. When the group attacked Josephine’s village, she and her family had too little time to flee. A group of about 80 LRA men surrounded her house. They tied up the family and shot and killed Josephine’s grandfather in front of her. They took Josephine and her three brothers into the bush. After an hour of walking, the men separated the children into pairs. Josephine and her 14-year-old brother Patrick never saw their other two brothers again. Josephine remained on the move with the LRA for eight months, never staying in one place for more than a week. She was forced to carry heavy loads, find food, and cook. She and other girls, some as young as 12, were forced to become LRA “wives.” Josephine was assigned to a boy who had also been kidnapped and forced to be an LRA fighter. She watched as the men forced him to kill another boy by striking him on the back of the head with a machete. Josephine managed to run away one day when she was sent out to look for food. She walked 40 km and found safety in a village in Sudan. Her brother Patrick escaped two months later during a Ugandan army attack on the LRA.

France
Sabine was 23 when her parents gave her to another family as partial payment for a used car. The family who took Sabine used her as a domestic slave for three years, making her look after their seven children and hiring her out to other men for sex. They burned her with an iron and cigarettes and beat her with iron bars and sticks, took her identity papers and claimed her unemployment benefits for themselves, and chained her up in a squalid shed at night to prevent her from escaping. They threw scraps of food on the ground for her to eat, treating her worse than an animal. When Sabine fell ill, the family dumped her outside a Paris hospital. She had no teeth and weighed less than 84 lbs. Her nose and ears had been mutilated, and she needed corrective surgery. A French court sentenced Sabine’s parents to 30 years in prison, the maximum sentence under French law. Ten other defendants received prison sentences of between 2 and 25 years.

Tajikistan-Russia
Farshad, 22, signed a contract with an employment agency in Dushanbe that promised him a well-paid construction job in Russia. The agency also promised to provide housing and three meals a day. The agency’s lawyer traveled on the train with Farshad and about 50 other young men, who gave the lawyer money for train tickets, bribes for the customs officials, and migration cards. In four days of travel, the men were given only water. When they arrived in Russia, the lawyer abandoned the group, and the men learned that the agency had not organized any work for them there. Another agency that the men found offered help but then confiscated their passports and sold the men to a local factory director. When the factory director found out some of the workers were planning to escape, he returned their passports only after they agreed to sign statements absolving the firm of any forced labor. Farshad and the others were once again stuck in Russia without work or money to return home.

Philippines-USA
Maria came to the United States with some 50 other Filipino nationals who were promised housing, transportation, and lucrative jobs at country clubs and hotels under the H2B guest worker program. Like the others, Maria dutifully paid the substantial recruitment fees to come to the United States. But when she arrived, she found that there was no employment secured for her. She did not work for weeks, but the recruiters seized her passport and prohibited her from leaving their house. She and other workers slept side-by-side on the floors of the kitchen, garage, and dining room. They were fed primarily chicken feet and innards. When the workers complained, the recruiters threatened to call the police or immigration services to arrest and deport them. A federal grand jury indicted the two defendants for conspiracy to hold the workers in a condition of forced labor.

Saudi Arabia
For Mylee, a young single mother from the Philippines, employment as a maid for a family in Saudi Arabia was a possible route out of poverty. Her employer was an officer in the Saudi Royal Navy. While his wife was away, he raped Mylee. She was subsequently raped repeatedly but was too scared to run away.

Mylee was given just one piece of bread to eat at meal time. When she fell and cut herself while cleaning, blood gushed from her wound, but her employer refused to take her to the hospital. He told her, “You might as well die.” Mylee wrapped the wound with her own clothes.

After several months, Mylee managed to contact Philippine labor authorities in Saudi Arabia, and they arrived at her residence with local police. While they gathered outside, Mylee’s employer raped her for the fifth time. The police finally rescued her after hearing her screams from outside the house, and they arrested her employer. The criminal investigation is ongoing.

India-USA
Ravi was among hundreds of workers lured to the United States from India by an oil rig construction company operating in the Gulf Coast. Lacking skilled welders and pipefitters to help rebuild after Hurricane Katrina struck the area in 2005, the company brought Ravi and others from India on H-2B visas, promising them permanent visas and residency. But, the promises were false. Instead, Ravi was forced to live with 23 other men in a small room with no privacy and two toilets. The camp was lined with barbed wire and security guards, so no one on the outside knew Ravi’s whereabouts. The company charged so much for food and a bunk bed that Ravi was unable to send any money home or repay the money he borrowed for his travel expenses to the United States. When the workers began organizing to protest their working conditions, the company began arbitrary firings and private deportations of the protest leaders. Those who remained filed a class action lawsuit and applied for TVPA immigration services.

Brazil
Samantha was born in Feira de Santana and grew up in poverty and with little education. At 15, she ran away from home to live on the streets after being sexually and physically abused by her father. A woman she met offered Samantha a job as a maid in another city in the state. Samantha accepted, excited by the opportunity to both earn money and move further away from home. But the destination house turned out to be a brothel, and Samantha was forced into prostitution and drug abuse. She was stripped of freedom and overcome by fear and sadness. After cycling through various assistance programs, government agencies, and shelters, Samantha went back to Feira de Santana, where she lives with a partner and his brother and sister. Her partner beats her and she still occasionally has sex with men for money.