Once a slave in the US, still fighting for her freedom
María Suárez survived life as a sex slave for five years in Los Angeles. There are thousands more like her.
from the March 22, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 4
Suárez's ordeal began in the '70s, but such ordeals continue today. Some 17,000 people are trafficked into the US each year – many of them teenagers and children – for purposes of forced labor or sex, says the US Justice Department. An untold number are picked up and trafficked domestically, as Maria was. The government is just beginning to get a handle on the problem.
During those five tragic years, Suárez was not wholly confined to the house. Covarrubias got her a factory job on an electronics assembly line and drove her to and from work each day. On Fridays, he would take her paycheck from her when she got into the car. Yet, terrified and superstitious, she told no one. "People asked me about who picked me up, but I was afraid for my family," she says. He would take her to secondhand stores for clothes.
For those not familiar with such situations, it may be difficult to grasp why someone would not just run away. "It speaks to the psychological coercion, the way people are controlled by fear," says Kay Buck, executive director of the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (CAST), in Los Angeles. "People are told over and over that if they tell anyone, they will be killed, or worse, family members will be killed. Coupled with violence on a regular basis, it wears down self-esteem."
CAST has worked with hundreds of slavery survivors in the past decade. The group was created after the 1995 case in El Monte, Calif., where 72 garment workers were found in an apartment complex where they'd been held captive for seven years. The workers had been trafficked from Thailand, yet when freed, were treated as illegal aliens and thrown in jail.
Community groups came together to try to help with services; CAST was formally created in 1998 and began pushing for appropriate legislation. Today it provides a range of services for slavery survivors and serves on a metropolitan trafficking task force with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and others, to make the police and public more aware of the growing trafficking problem.
Capt. Kyle Jackson of LAPD says the police never thought about the problem since they had no authority until the state penal code changed last year.
"You might look at a two-bedroom apartment with 20 people in it and think they're undocumented individuals – which local law enforcement doesn't get involved in – whereas it might in fact be trafficking," he says. Now they're training all LAPD officers and providing resources for other departments in the state.
Human trafficking is fast approaching drugs and the illegal arms trade as the most profitable criminal activities globally. In 2000, Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), to enlist the government in prosecution of traffickers and provision of victim services. At least 22 states have passed laws, but law enforcement is scrambling to train their people about the problem and how to identify situations correctly.
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