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INSIGHT
Slavery and Trafficking in the United States
Aired March 9, 2005 - 23:00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JONATHAN MANN, CNN HOST: The USA's secret slaves. Smuggled into the country and then sold over and over again for sex. An outrage-turned- industry in the land of the free.
Hello and welcome.
There are places infamous around the world for the sex trade and the trade in human beings that are fed into it. U.S. President Bush may have had South Asia or Eastern Europe in mind when he called sex trafficking a special evil, an underground of brutality and lonely fear.
But no one in the United States has to look that far. His country has generated its own terrible underground industry of people held against their will and forced into prostitution. Estimates of the numbers vary widely from a few thousand to tens of thousands.
But the U.S. government has been slow to find them, in part because until recently it wasn't really looking. It's looking now.
On our program today, Thelma Gutierrez follows the journey of tears.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It is a hidden crime.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Yes, I believe we were slaves.
GUTIERREZ: From secret residential brothels in the city.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): RR they wouldn't let us leave or go anywhere.
GUTIERREZ: To brothels in the agricultural fields, women are being bought and sold.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is a very lucrative crime and that's why people are willing to exploit other human beings.
GUTIERREZ: It's called human trafficking and only drugs and guns generate more money for organized crime.
Meet Alex.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): The woman who brought me here told me I would work in a restaurant and I would pay her off with my labor.
GUTIERREZ: Instead, Alex was forced to pay off her debts with her body. We can't show you her face because she is a federal witness in the case against her captors.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): We were thinking, my God, we're all going to die here.
GUTIERREZ: Alex was smuggled from Mexico through the desert to a house here in Los Angeles, where her dreams were shattered.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): They didn't tell me what was going to happen. They just told me you are going to go with this man.
GUTIERREZ: It was a frightening realization. The restaurant job was a farce. Alex and a dozen others, including two 14-year-old girls, where forced to work as prostitutes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): We were working 24 hours. It didn't matter if we were sleeping. They would get us up. If we were hungry, there was nothing to eat. All that mattered was their money.
GUTIERREZ: Sheriffs Deputy Rick Castro (ph) leads a small strike force against human traffickers.
We followed the team as they conduct ongoing surveillance of an agricultural field in the suburbs of San Diego.
Deputy Castro (ph) and Sergeant Marcos Ramirez (ph) told me it is common for traffickers to set up brothels for migrant workers. Here we watch from atop a mountain range.
On this night, our camera captures several people running into the field. Deputy Castro (ph) is an expert on trafficking. He says in the past three years he has noticed a marked increase in traffic victims and they're not easy to identify.
RICK CASTRO (ph), DEPUTY: Unfortunately, when I first started interviewing some of these victims, I didn't know what human trafficking was. And I let a lot of victims -- when I think back, I let a lot of victims go.
GUTIERREZ: It is a transient operation where women are brought to the field. They disappear into a grove of trees. This is where business is conducted, through the bush and on the ground.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're out here in this bush doing it because they have to.
GUTIERREZ (on camera): And if they don't want to or if they try to run away?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They'll be dealt with severely by the persons who are basically the ones that we're after.
GUTIERREZ (voice-over): Castro says punishment for running away is brutal.
CASTRO (ph): These girls will get raped violently. They'll get sodomized. Beaten very badly. And in one case specifically I remember that the family was beaten with a clothes hanger for about two hours and just by witnessing this torture for two hours, those girls will have that lasting impression for the rest of their life and they will never, ever go against that trafficker.
HEIDI RUMMEL (ph), ASST. U.S. ATTNY.: The youngest girl at this house was 14 years old.
GUTIERREZ: Heidi Rummel (ph) is an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles.
RUMMEL (ph): October, she had 80 clients. In November, 91. December, 97.
GUTIERREZ: She shows us the journal of a young victim who was forced to prostitute herself here in a house without windows.
(on camera): Why do you think it was important to keep these journals?
RUMMEL (ph): Because the defendant had promised them that when they left he would pay them for the clients they had serviced. They didn't receive money for it time that they were working here.
GUTIERREZ (voice-over): Over four months, the girl was forced to have sex with 274 clients. Her trafficker, Sammy Chung (ph), is now serving 12- 1/2 years in federal prison.
From Texas to New Jersey to California, international trafficking rings have been busted across the country. As of February of this year, the Justice Department has 203 open trafficking investigations.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): I would get sad at times because I would imagine my dreams escaping like water through my hands.
GUTIERREZ: Alex is convinced that many of the clients knew that she and the others were being forced to sell themselves, but didn't care.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): To the men, I have so little to say. I hope they will take a step back and think, especially if they have children or daughters. I don't think they would like to see their daughters in those places.
GUTIERREZ: For her traffickers, Alex was a reusable commodity who could be used over and over again, just like the women we see here running across a field on a degrading journey that may have no end.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MANN: We take a break now. When we return.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How horrible. How unjust. And what it does to their lives.
MANN (voice-over): We pick up the trail in the Mexican border city of Tijuana.
Stay with us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MANN: The Mexican border town of Tijuana has a reputation in the United States as a city of easy morals and illicit entertainment. Prostitution is legal there, as it is in much of the country, and Americans only have to take a short drive to find the things they're denied back home.
Welcome back.
The Tijuana border crossing is one of the busiest in the world. The vast majority of the people and the business moving north and south are law abiding, but Tijuana is also a transit point for some of the victims of sexual slavery in the United States.
Once again, here's Thelma Gutierrez.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GUTIERREZ (voice-over): His voice echoes through this neighborhood in Tijuana, Mexico. It is a song without words. Only melancholy, haunting songs from a child who was once bought and sold.
Tijuana sits on the United States-Mexican border. On the weekends, Americans flock here to party. Just five blocks away is a dark side few outsiders have seen. This is what police call the tolerant zone. It is a maze of dark alleys lines with small bars and young prostitutes.
In this zone, prostitution is legal, but sex workers must be at least 18. Many don't look a day over 15, and some maybe even younger than that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): I don't like it, but what can I do. I started this a year ago, when I was 17.
GUTIERREZ: It's hard to know just how old this teenage prostitute really is because they all say they're at least 18.
We can't show you her face because she'd be in danger from the men who control this zone and who enforce strict discipline on the young prostitutes who work for them.
The teenager says she was lured to the border from another state in Mexico and that she's doing this to earn money to send to her family. Trafficking experts say young women like her would be over more profitable commodities in the United States.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): I've had guys ask me to go with them. I would like to leave here if I could. Some people have even tried to take me to the United States.
GUTIERREZ: This is how international traffickers lure young women into the underground world of sex slavery, where they might disappear forever.
CHARLES SONG, COALITION TO ABOLISH SLAVERY: People will be promised different jobs or different opportunities to come here to the United States or they will actually be literally kidnapped and forced to come over here.
GUTIERREZ: Federal authorities say Mexico is predominantly a source country, where human beings are found, bought and sold by traffickers. According to CIA estimates, nearly 18,000 people are trafficked into the United States each year. One-third are from Latin America and no one knows how many are minors.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They range from ages 14 to 18 and maybe younger. They've got a lot of makeup on (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
GUTIERREZ: Marissa Barber (ph) is a human rights activist who works with other groups to protect the most vulnerable, treat children who work in the sex trade.
MARISSA BARBER (ph), HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST: They have no place to go, so they roam the streets. They do survival sex. They do other things that you don't want to mention. They don't do them because they're bad, but because it is a need.
GUTIERREZ: The main thing children need is a place where they can feel safe.
JORGE BADOYA (ph), SHELTER DIRECTOR: This is the sleeping area. We have three sleeping areas.
GUTIERREZ: We were granted rare access to this government-run shelter in Tijuana, where sexually exploited boys are counseled, educated and given a second chance at childhood. Jorge Badoya (ph) is the director.
BADOYA (ph): We are most of the time full because we have the problem with street children.
GUTIERREZ: It was here at this shelter where I first met the boy with the voice who sings songs that only have meeting to him. We'll call him Tomas.
TOMAS, VICTIMIZED CHILD (through translator): When I sing, I forget everything, all the hurt, the rejection and the abuse. I express my feelings by singing.
GUTIERREZ: Tomas also expresses his feelings by writing. He showed me his journal. Inside, the tragic story of a mother who did not want him and a life of abuse that led him to the streets when he was only 11.
TOMAS (through translator): My mother and stepfather threw me out of the house. I was crying on the street, and a man came and took me home.
GUTIERREZ: Tomas ran away from a series of child molesters until one day he says he met a woman with whom he thought he'd be safe.
TOMAS (through translator): The woman took me home with her and fed me. Within a week, I learned it was a brothel. I had nowhere to go, so I stayed there. The woman gave me things. In exchange, I had to prostitute myself.
GUTIERREZ: Tomas says he was forced to wear makeup and dress as a girl for clients, some of whom were American men.
He says he lived this twisted existence for four years as a child prostitute, until he learned he was about to be trafficked.
TOMAS (through translator): I found out they wanted to sell me to a person. He offered to buy me, but I said no.
GUTIERREZ: This time, when he ran away he managed to find his way to Jorge's shelter.
Sister Dora (ph) says there is no shortage of exploited children in her shelter either. She bought it and runs it with money she made in California real estate.
This was a socialite who once owned beachfront property in San Diego and 120 pairs of designer shoes, a far cry from how she lives now.
She has space for six kids, but 16 live here.
SISTER DORA (ph), SHELTER DIRECTOR: We actually are hoping and started praying for a center that would house as many as 80 to 100 children.
GUTIERREZ: Sister Dora (ph) says it was a calling from above that compelled her to dedicate her life to the children and her own money to pay tuition so that each one can go to school. For many here, it is the first time in a classroom.
She says every boy and girl here has a story of heartache and stolen innocence, stories she's heard for 10 years.
SISTER DORA (ph): And I cannot fathom or even understand how anyone man, whether it is your child or your present wife or what, that you would violate them. I cannot understand that, and it just breaks me up terribly. How horrible. How unjust. And what it does to their lives. They're just absolutely in shambles, and this is why we have so many that do attend, go into prostitution for that reason. They say, well, I'm not worth anything.
GUTIERREZ: In the tolerant zone, child prostitutes learn the tragic lesson: that the value of their lives is ultimately measured in the desires and wallets of strangers.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MANN: We take another break, and then.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a hugely profitable industry, the selling and buying of human beings.
MANN (voice-over): A glimpse elsewhere inside America's forced labor trade.
Stay with us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MANN: Most Americans never expect to meet a slave. They probably don't know where to look. The U.S. government says that it's a relatively rare phenomenon, but in some of the country's largest cities, on its farms, in all kinds of businesses and in private homes, there are people who are forced to work against their will.
Welcome back.
The immediate threat of punishment isn't the only thing that keeps slavery secret. Sometimes victims don't turn to U.S. authorities for help because they're afraid of being deported, and maybe even punished when they get back home.
The United States now has a special visa that gives trafficked people the same rights as refugees, temporary legal residence, and then a chance to stay for good. Even so, it is a problem across the country.
One last time, here's Thelma Gutierrez.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GUTIERREZ (voice-over): From New York to Los Angeles and most every major city in between, a secret labor force is hard at work.
In the fields, garment shops, restaurants and even in some homes. We're not just talking about undocumented workers.
DAN STORMER, CIVIL RIGHTS ATTNY.: Slavery is alive and well. Trafficking in slaves is alive and well.
GUTIERREZ: We're talking about modern-day slaves, living and working in this country without pay and against their will.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): For example, my experience was really hell.
GUTIERREZ: 47-year-old Tan Lyn Campidinon (ph) is a mother of two from Thailand.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was a salve to my traffickers.
GUTIERREZ: Nanette Louise (ph) is a mother of three from a small village in the Philippines. Both struggled to eke out a living in their own countries, but like so many others who live in poverty, Nanette (ph) and Tan Lyn (ph) were easy targets for traffickers looking for slave labor, and this is their story.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Because my family is poor, right, they wanted to make money and then they wanted to take care of my son and my children and make them happy.
GUTIERREZ: Tan Lyn (ph) dreamed of giving her kids the education she never had and believes the only way was to leave Thailand and everything she loved behind.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When I want a job and want to make money.
GUTIERREZ: So when this woman, Silvawan Verapol (ph), a Thai socialite living in the United States, offered Tan Lyn (ph) a job in a restaurant in California, she thought her prayer were answered.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Tell me, if you want to come back to Thailand, you work for me like four years.
GUTIERREZ: Tan Lyn (ph) didn't understand what she was I for until she landed in Los Angeles with no money and no friends. Silvawan (ph) even took her passport away.
Tan Lyn (ph) says she was forced to work around the clock seven days a week.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I worked like an 18 hour or 19 hour day.
GUTIERREZ: When her day ended at the Thai restaurant, her second job would begin at Silvawan's (ph) home, where Tan Lyn (ph) and seven other Thai women worked as house servants.
She says she will never get over the humiliation she felt when Silvawan (ph) forced her to serve meals and perform other chores on her hands and knees as a sign of submission. And then there was the broken dreams.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I come here, everything I pay.
GUTIERREZ: Tan Lyn (ph) hoped to send money home to her children, but her salary was only $240 a month. From that, all of her living expenses were deducted, leaving her with nothing. When she complained or talked about leaving, she says she was threatened.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): If I run away and tell the police, my family will suffer.
GUTIERREZ: And so she kept silent for nine long years without seeing her children. Until one day she and another woman escaped. That's when the FBI and immigration authorities got involved.
Nanette Louise (ph) was a teacher in a rural village in the Philippines. She thought she was coming to the United States to work as a travel companion to an elderly woman. Instead, she says, she ended up in Los Angeles, working here, in the home of then Sony executive Judd Jackson and his wife, Beth, whom she was to refer to as Sir Judd and Ma'am Beth.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I started to work at 5:30 to 8 or 10 at night.
GUTIERREZ: Nanette (ph) says the Jacksons had strict daily, weekly and biweekly schedules for her to follow, which included meticulous care of the couple's two dogs, Andrew and Stella.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I had to brush the dogs teeth, clean their ears and even give them vitamins every day, but I was forced to sleep on a dog bed.
GUTIERREZ: Nannette (ph) says she slept on the floor of this dining room and because her passport was taken she couldn't escape. She said she was charged room and board, and by the time her living expenses were deducted, she had nothing. And she claims on several occasions she was hit.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE; Follow my instructions. I follow the instructions, but she just hit across face and across my mouth.
GUTIERREZ: A neighbor finally called the police. No criminal charges were filed against the Jacksons, but civil rights attorney Dan Stormer filed a civil law suit against them.
STORMER: The Jacksons have stature within the community. I mean, this is a man who is vice president of corporate legal affairs for Sony. The jury found under the laws of this country that she had been held, falsely imprisoned, held as a slave, and her rights violated.
GUTIERREZ: After the verdict, Judd Jackson was let go from his job at Sony. Neither of the Jacksons agreed to be interviewed for this story, but their attorney, Jack Daniels (ph), says his clients never physically abused Nanette (ph).
JACK DANIELS (ph) ATTNY.: She certainly wasn't an indentured servant. She had free access to leave anytime she wanted to. All she had to do was walk out the front gate and turn a knob.
GUTIERREZ: In the 12 months and 3 weeks she worked for the Jacksons, Nanette (ph) says she was paid $300. At trial, the jury awarded her $825,000 in damages.
As for Tan Lyn (ph), her trafficker, Silvawan Verapol (ph), is serving an 8-year sentence in federal prison for harboring illegal aliens and violating involuntary servitude laws.
Tan Lyn (ph) now has a real restaurant job and she's able to send money home to her family.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I wanted everything like American people.
GUTIERREZ: As for the dream that she could one day educate her children.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I love America.
GUTIERREZ: She did it. By scraping together meager funds, she managed to send her daughter, Pin (ph), to a university in Thailand and now the little girl Tan Lyn (ph) left behind years ago is the first in her family to become a university graduate, a very American dream come true.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MANN: And that's INSIGHT for today. I'm Jonathan Mann. Before we go, a reminder that we like to hear from you. We'd like to hear your thoughts on the program you've seen or the topics we've covered. Send them to INSIGHT@CNN.COM, once again INSIGHT@CNN.COM.
For now, the news continues, here on CNN.
END
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