Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Larry King Live
Child Trafficking and Prostitution Wide-Spread in United States
Aired October 18, 2010 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight, human trafficking. Women and children bought and sold for cheap labor and sex. Held captive as slaves right here in America.
Dan Rather, Julia Ormond, Mira Sorvino and a former teen sex slave ripped the lid off a crisis in our own backyard.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Some guys did actually know how old I was, and they liked that.
KING: Which U.S. city is a hub for child prostitution? Are your neighbors imprisoning workers? Talking truth exposed next on LARRY KING LIVE.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Good evening. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California formally signed a very important bill today. It requires mayor retailers and manufacturers who do business in the state to publicly disclose their efforts to eradicate slavery and human trafficking from their supply chains.
Joining us to talk about this issue that affects us all are Julia Ormond, the Emmy-winning actress and activist, the founder and president of the ASSET, that's the Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking. She previously served as a United Nations goodwill ambassador.
Ben Skinner is senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. He's author of a "Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern Day Slavery." He's the first person known to have witnessed the sale of human beings on four continents.
And Mira Sorvino, Academy Award-winning actress and activist, a goodwill ambassador for the U.N.'s Office on Drugs and Crime or Drugs and Trafficking, it's the ODT.
All right, Julia, explain this to me. What are we -- what are we saying? When we hear slavery, we're thinking about 1860 and Abraham Lincoln? What are we talking about?
JULIA ORMOND, ACTRESS AND ANTI-SLAVERY ACTIVIST: Well, slavery today is more prevalent than ever before in history. And I define slavery as when one person completely controls another, uses violence or violent threat to maintain that control, exploits them economically and pays them effectively nothing.
And trafficking is a process of enslaving someone.
KING: And it occurs every where including the United States?
ORMOND: It occurs every where. I believe there are two countries that it hasn't been found in, and that's Greenland and Iceland. But yes, this is absolutely every where.
KING: How did you get involved?
ORMOND: I got involved -- I was invited by the U.N. to become a goodwill ambassador, and they were generous and allowed me to spend a good year going around the world meeting with victims, going to find success stories, really. People who'd found great solutions and working on those.
And I stayed involved because of meeting the victims and hearing their stories.
KING: Mira Sorvino, how did you get involved?
MIRA SORVINO, ACTRESS AND ANTI-SLAVERY ACTIVIST: I was originally Amnesty International Stop Violence against Women campaign ambassador for several years.
And underneath that canopy of abuse to women, both domestically and internationally, it was the subject of human trafficking, and right as we were starting to explore and do events about it, and give speeches about it, I was offered the film "Human Trafficking" that Robert (INAUDIBLE) Sr. was producing and (INAUDIBLE) directed.
And I decided to take it on because it was a way to marry my activist and my artistic interests.
KING: And you are both?
SORVINO: And I became very, very passionate about this particular cause. So afterwards, the U.N. asked me to become their goodwill ambassador for the U.N. obviously.
KING: Ben, why do we call it human trafficking, as opposed to what?
BEN SKINNER, HUMAN TRAFFICKING EXPERT: As opposed so drug trafficking, as opposed to organ trafficking. The -- as opposed to arms trafficking.
Today if we're talking about the best estimates that we have, there are organized criminal syndicates make more money from human trafficking than they do from illegal arms trafficking. It's the second most lucrative -- human beings are the second most lucrative commodity after drugs.
KING: Who are these syndicates?
SKINNER: These well --
KING: What kind of people do this?
SKINNER: First of all, put out of your head the idea that these are vast mafias. In some cases, in -- for example, in the case of some of the Mexican cartels operating out of Juarez, there's overlap between drug traffickers and human traffickers.
Generally speaking, though, this is -- these are few small operations, a few people operating to recruit, to transport and to harbor people in forced labor. This is slavery.
KING: What kind of people in the United States are doing this?
SKINNER: In the --
KING: Can you pinpoint the type of criminal?
SKINNER: The type of criminal is somebody who basically understands that the risk for prosecution historically has been very low and the rewards over the long term are very, very high.
In South Africa, for example, I was -- I went undercover to infiltrate a Nigerian human trafficking syndicate. These were people who were initially trafficking in crack cocaine, but the risk for prosecution was very high for that. The risk of prosecution for trafficking in 15-year-old girls was negligible.
KING: Why?
SKINNER: Because police in South Africa are -- don't enforce the laws against human trafficking. There is no standalone law against human trafficking in South Africa. And these are volatile -- these are volatile commodities, but they're not commodities that are -- that are inexpensive.
KING: The U.S. -- your office that you work with estimates that 12.3 million people are enslaved around the world. And that's a low estimate, right?
SKINNER: That's a low estimate, yes.
KING: All right. How does it work, Julia? How do they get someone in the United States to be a slave? What do they do?
ORMOND: Well, I think people -- either it is somebody who's an internal trafficking victim, which is a story that's very much untold. There is a profile on sex trafficking, for instance, of kids who are vulnerable youth, runaway youth, sometimes hook up with a boyfriend.
Average age to become a prostitute in the U.S. is 13. So there's a strong profile in that, in child prostitution. Or it's agricultural workers. It's people who perhaps they're undocumented workers who are put in a vulnerable circumstance. People who have been smuggled across the border and then they're smuggled instead of releasing them, sells them to a trafficker.
Their passports are taken away, and they're put to work in agricultural work or domestic servitude, or something like that.
KING: What does a slave bring? What do you get for -- if you're selling someone to someone for what?
SORVINO: It depends on what you're selling them for, and how many times a day you're selling them. If you're selling a sexual worker, the profit margin can be enormous, because you basically sell their services 10, 20, 30 times a day.
And then if you want to sell them to another trafficker, you can do that, too. So I think you would probably have the figures on what -- like what is a migrant worker go for?
SKINNER: Well --
ORMOND: Well, it used to be in the transatlantic slave trade was you could buy a young male agricultural worker for about $40,000 in today's money.
SKINNER: In today's money.
ORMOND: And you can buy that same young male and get agricultural work on American soil for $300 today. And that means that --
KING: So men and women are sold?
ORMOND: Yes. Yes. This is men, women and children. This is very much a human issue. And that's one of the reasons why human trafficking and the selling of children has really taken off because you can continue to make the profit from human beings' work where as once you've sold drugs they're gone.
KING: We'll be back with more. The National Human Trafficking Resources Center, which is operated by the Polaris Project, has a toll free hotline. The number is 1-888-373-7888.
The hotline operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is nonprofit and nongovernmental.
Want to know more about what's going on right here in America? Prepared to be shocked. Dan Rather is going to join us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KING: Dan Rather is the award-winning veteran journalist. Always good to see him. He's the anchor of HDNet's "Dan Rather Reports." His report on child sex trafficking earlier this year, Portland, Oregon is beyond shocking.
Here is a clip. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DOUG JUSTICE, PORTLAND POLICE: It is an out-of-control problem. It is unbelievable. I've only done this job three years in the vice. I've been a cop for 29.
If you had told me three years ago that a 14-year-old girl would go to a food court, meet a guy and three hours later be selling herself, I would have said no freaking way.
It happens every single day. Every day. An average pimp with one kid will make between $800 and $1,000 a day, that's seven days a week, 30 days in a month.
DAN RATHER, INVESTIGATED CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING: And not much overhead?
JUSTICE: No overhead. You get a cheap hotel for 50 bucks a night. A bottle of booze. You take her to Taco Bell or McDonald's, something, cheap food, you buy her some clothes, and that's it.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Dan, how did you -- how did you come across this story?
RATHER: Well, I came across it -- Larry, in doing our investigative series, we're always looking for good investigative stories. We went to Moldova -- not a very well known country, used to be called Moldavia, now called Moldova -- to do a story about the international trafficking in kidneys.
And in Moldova it was very obvious that this sex trade traffic, particularly concentrating on young girls and in some cases boys, was heavy. I came back home intending to do a story on the international sex trafficking in underage girls and boys.
What I found out very quickly is it's a big problem in this country. I know a lot of people are shaking their heads saying, well, I don't believe that. But the FBI estimates that in excess of 100,000 American girls, American girls are involved in some form of the sex slavery trafficking business today.
So we look around, we found Portland, Oregon at that time, and I think it may still be true, had the highest percentage of underage girls involving -- involved in prostitution on a population basis of anywhere in the country.
So we went to Portland, Oregon. We met some heroic cops out there. Megan Duquesne and the man you just saw, Doug Justice, are heroes from my standpoint. And they explain to us that this is an American problem. A lot of people think that well, it must be immigrants or people brought into the country.
They -- the estimate of 100,000 or more, which I think is low, there are estimates as many as 300,000 underage girls and some boys in this country involved in under age prostitution. This shocked me beyond belief. I didn't believe it. But it turns out, it's true.
KING: Do these girls -- do these girls go back to their homes at night? Or are they kept as slaves? How does that work?
RATHER: No, how it works, and Ben touched on it earlier. This is very organized now, a lot of people who were in the drug trade have found out that this is more lucrative and less chance of getting sent to prison for a long time.
So they will go to a mall and they look -- they have a profile. They'll look for a young girl they think looks vulnerable, fits their profile, they'll send out a 19-year-old young man out to sweet talk her a little bit.
And the way they operate it, first they recruit the girl, then they break the girl, and then they maintain the girl. And the way it works is usually the girl will move out. And I know there's a myth out there that most of these underage girls who are in prostitution are runaways.
That's not true. You're talking about the girl next door, suburban areas are ripe with this kind of thing. Many people listening will say I think Rather must be overreacting to this, or overestimating it.
Not true. This is a national problem here in the United States. And the way it works, these organized gangs, and they usually are fairly small. They recruit these girls, then they get her involved with this young man. She moves out, she moves in with him. The next thing you know, he's getting her to sleep with his friend.
And after that, once she's done that, she's a prostitute and she can't go back, and that's the way it works.
KING: We'll be back with more with the entire panel. Dan Rather will remain with us in this unbelievable story.
Statistics about the shadowy business of human trafficking are hard to pin down due to the nature of the crime and the fact they're not reported in many cases. According to FreetheSlaves.net there are 27 million slaves in the world today.
More after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was hit a couple of times for not bringing back enough, for talking back. You're always supposed to bring back more than 100. I was at least, I don't know about other girls.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Between me and my boyfriend at the time, there was a lot of violence. I used to have black eyes. He used to choke me all the time. So I would have never thought that I would have been in this situation.
I would have never thought that I would have sold myself for any other person. I would have never thought that I would have let myself be treated as badly as I was being treated by him. (END OF VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Ben Skinner, you were offered a slave?
SKINNER: On four continents I was witness to the negotiations for the sale of human beings.
KING: How does it work?
SKINNER: OK. Let's say we're in -- or where you're from, Brooklyn, New York, where I was living at the time. Some eight hours from there, on the street in broad daylight, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I pulled up in an SUV, rolled down a window. And there were four men standing in front of a barber shop.
Everyone in the neighborhood knows what these men do. They call themselves courtiers. They're brokers. One of them came over and said, do you want to get a person? Over the course of some two hours, again broad daylight, I told this fellow I was a reporter, I wasn't under cover for this.
I was offered a young girl, 12 years old, for domestic slavery. And the --
KING: To stay with you?
SKINNER: To stay with me, to work in my house, to cook, to clean. According to the last U.N. study that was done on this, there are some -- prior to the earthquake, there were some 300,000 children in Haiti in this form of domestic slavery, and at a certain point the trafficker leaned in and said, this is rather a delicate question, but would you want this child as a partner?
And sexual slavery is part and parcel of these children's bondage.
KING: Why don't these girls, Julia, scream and run?
ORMOND: Well, I think part of it is that they -- initially there's a lot of coercion in terms of getting somebody into that situation. And then they become very bonded in terms of believing that they are dependent on their trafficker. And that is something that the trafficker will move towards.
KING: I understand that, but what about, Mira, after they're sold? OK. The trafficker, they're bonded, but what about the guy they bonded sells them to?
SORVINO: Right. Well, in almost all trafficking situations whether it be any kind of labor trafficking, slavery or sexual trafficking, and usually if it's a female trafficking victim that person will be a victim of rape. Whether or not they are sexually trafficked person.
They are constantly kept under the threat of physical harm to themselves, the threat -- very definite threat to their family. And they know that these girls or boys, or whomever they may be, all they have to hope for and dream for is that their family is safe somewhere, that they're helping their family in some way, and so they have a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
They stay in their trafficking situations to protect their families because as one victim said to me here in the states. She said it was all I had left to give. I knew I was keeping my family safe by staying there, by not running away. I knew if I tried to run away, he told me he would kill them.
KING: Let's take another look at the "Rather Reports" episode on sex trafficking. Here's a conversation with a pimp. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm going to tell you something, if you pay the price, you can get what you want. I can get it for you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Really?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, if you want something really young, that $200 that'll cost a little more than that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure, sure.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But how young you talking about? Talk to me.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, how young do you have?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I don't have nothing younger than 14.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. No, 14 is good.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. That'd be great.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, you will have to add something to that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure, sure.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Dan, there's no other way to describe this but shocking, right? I mean this -- didn't you -- how did you feel as a reporter?
RATHER: I was shocked, I was outraged. In the beginning I was skeptical thinking, well, this problem can't be as broad as the police say it is. But it is, indeed. And I think, Larry, the point we may have missed here, that the premium is on very young girls, cases where 80, 83, 85-year-old men will pay a real premium, $500, $1,000 for a girl who's 11.
Yes, 11 years old or 12 years old. We don't make this up. These are real cases that are happening in our country and by and large, as I said before, they are happening to -- not to immigrants who come into the country but to American girls, in some cases, boys here.
KING: The average cost of buying a slave is $90, according to FreetheSlaves.net. More on what you need to know after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KING: There are hundreds of thousands of young girls in America -- right now -- being held in bondage.
Who is the -- who's the buyer, Ben?
SKINNER: The buyer is the most difficult person to study in all of this. I went undercover to talk to traffickers. Talking to buyers is a very difficult question. But I think on a day when we are celebrating a small victory in the --
KING: The bill?
SKINNER: In the 5,000-year-old fight, it's important to say, very definitively, we are all the buyers. And Julia, very effectively with the governor today, said the slavery that bothers me most is what takes place in our home. Because slavery touches the products that we buy.
KING: Explain.
ORMOND: In my travels around the world, I went to see -- as I said, I went to see solutions. And so I looked at slavery that was going on in agriculture and mining, and having gotten engaged on the issue because I was horrified by the sex trafficking, I am equally horrified by what happens in terms of forced labor, trafficking and slavery around the world.
So because the supply chain today is extremely complicated, there is a great deal of agricultural and mining slavery, which means that the products we buy, whether it's our t-shirts, cell phones or computers or cars or our brake pads, or our sheets or our coffee or cocoa, or so many of the products that are in my home, they're tainted by slavery.
KING: So what does this bill say?
ORMOND: What the bill requires is that major retailers and companies who trade in California have to go public with their policy on slavery, trafficking and forced labor.
KING: Well, who's in favor of it?
ORMOND: Nobody is in favor of it, but I think what I have seen over the years of working on this is that it takes a great deal of work to bring somebody to the point of being open hearted enough to be able to see it.
I know that I've done that myself. I've gone to see fishing slavery, I'm like, gone there, and I arrived at the lake, and I'm like, OK, I know you're telling me, I'm looking at slavery.
But what am I looking for? And they will then -- the NGO will then take you through, look at the boy on the left who's small, clearly about 12 years old, but he's built like a man because he's done five years hard labor. And then once you've been educated on it, you can see it.
The supply chain -- today's supply chain is a direct route and map to the places where slavery and trafficking latch on to the supply chain. And that's where the NGO community can come in and --
KING: So it's possible that -- not possible, probable, Mira, that someone brought a product today in a store that was made or involved in the making by a slave?
SORVINO: Yes, well, I was sort of horrified to learn recently that a lot of the pig iron that is mined in South America is used in our bathtubs. You know, some of the largest bathtub makers use pig iron that's smelted in slave mine areas.
KING: Do they know that?
SORVINO: So you're taking a bath in a product that was built --
KING: But do they know that? Does the manufacturer know that?
SORVINO: I would think they probably know that. I think at a certain point, at a certain point, if they are -- it's just like the oil spill. You know, at a certain point someone along the chain knows it. Whether they've made it a priority is another question.
SKINNER: If they don't know it, they should know it, and consumers should know it. And that's what this bill does, it empowers consumers. And by the way, just before we came on air, I spoke with Caroline Maloney's office. This is Congresswoman Maloney. And she is planning a federal piece of legislation that mirrors this, that gives consumers the tools to decide not to buy slave made products.
ORMOND: I think one of the things I've seen is that it's a little more complicated than that. It's not a -- it's not so much for the company function of knowing, it's the function of the company saying, well, we don't control it. And what we have said with the bill is OK, some of you say you don't control all of it, some of you are prepared to use your influence. We want to engage the consumer by disclosing the policy that the companies have, because I believe the consumer will say, I want to buy the product of the company that's doing the right thing and growing best practices.
KING: Let's take a look at another clip from "Dan Rather Reports on Pornland, Oregon." Here are two girls caught up in the sex trade, talking about the demand for under aged prostitutes.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Some guys are creepy. Some guys did actually know how old I was. And they liked that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I used to lie and say I was 18, because I know that some of them would get freaked out. So I would lie and say I was 18. Some of them, you know, I just kind of get the vibe off of them, so I'd let them know my real age. One time I let this guy know my real age, yeah, I'm 16. He said, oh, well you're not young enough, you need to get out. I was like -- I was so desperate for money at the time that I said, well, I can put my hair in pig tails. I can make myself look younger. And he didn't want it. He wanted -- he told me he was looking for an 11 or 12-year-old.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: According to the Polaris Project, 32 billion dollars in profits are generated from the human trafficking industry. We're going to hear from a former teenaged sex slave and survivor next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KING: "PARKER/SPITZER" airs at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, right before this show. Their guest tonight, Republican ad maker Fred Davis. Watch it a little.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ELLIOT SPITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Is there anyway that Barack Obama can change the narrative in the next two weeks?
FRED DAVIS, AD MAKER: On the path he's on now, I don't think so, Elliott. You've watched what I watched. I watched him on television last night. I -- there's an ad we did called "Morning in America" that I think fits what America is thinking right now.
Nobody hates Barack Obama. I don't hate Barack Obama. I think he's -- he got off on the wrong track. I think he overreached, I think he -- I don't know -- thought he had a mandate that maybe really wasn't there, or missed the bigness of what was wrong with our economy. But he's out there still blaming George W. Bush.
KATHLEEN PARKER, CNN ANCHOR: Well, and attacking Boehner.
DAVIS: -- major league spending. Attacking Boehner. He's doing things that I thought were kind of pitiful.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: We're back with our topic. Amanda Bonella was a teenaged runaway forced into prostitution at age 15. She escaped the sex trade at age 23. She considers herself a survivor and not a victim. She joins us from Vancouver, British Columbia. How did you wind up on the streets, Amanda?
AMANDA BONELLA, FORCED INTO PROSTITUTION AT AGE 16: Hi, Larry. When I was very young, my mother gave me away and I wound up in foster homes and was adopted two times. The last home that I was placed in, the father in that home was sexually abusive. When I got the courage to run away, I did. I was 15.
And the place that I ran away to was very cold. I would take city buses just to stay warm. And eventually I knew I was going to have to do something else. I went into a bar one time to warm up, just in the doorway. This man and woman were there, and she was a few months pregnant. They said I could come and stay with them. Within a few days, they told me what I needed to do to pay for my accommodation there.
And I really didn't know anything about prostitution. All I knew was that Mary Magdalene had been a prostitute. That was the level of my understanding of it. It was extremely surreal when it happened.
KING: Who were the men who were buying your services?
BONELLA: You know, that's something I really want people to pay attention to. It's the people that we respect in our society, which is what makes it really hard even to get out of it. You know, it's the lawyers, the doctors, social workers, psychologists, police, priests. Yeah, it's --
KING: Priests?
BONELLA: It's not the people that you think it is.
KING: Were you threatened? Were you harmed?
BONELLA: Of course, of course. I mean, by multiple people, by the people that were controlling me, but also by people that would drive down the street and throw pennies at us. A girlfriend of mine is missing part of her ear because someone threw a beer bottle at her. It's not just the pimps that we experience silence from. It's society too.
KING: How did you get out?
BONELLA: It was really really hard. I had a really bad date that lasted three days. And they figured I was dead. After I escaped that, I knew that I had to get out. I had heard about an organization that consisted predominantly of women that had been there before. I couldn't believe that, that there were women that not only escaped but they came back and helped others get out.
I went to that organization. And I went through a series of exiting programs. I went to therapy. I did a lot of work on myself in order to get out. But it really -- if there wasn't that organization that had survivors working there, I don't think I ever would have gotten out. I think it's really important that people work side by side with us.
KING: If you're up in Vancouver, go to a place called Yogi Berra -- Yogi Berry. It's an eatery. Yogi Berry. And it's owned by Amanda. You help her and you help a lot of other people too. Dan, what's your reaction to her story? Is that comparable to what you found in Portland?
RATHER: Absolutely comparable. I think it's worth noting, Larry, that I-5, which runs roughly Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, down to Los Angeles, that corridor through there is perhaps the worst in the country. There are a lot of others places that are very bad.
The problem we're talking about -- this young woman's story is very typical of what we heard. The recruitment perhaps is most intense there. I will say, off of that Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles sort of freeway for underaged prostitution, sometimes -- often times, they take underaged girls to Las Vegas for conventions. What the young woman said about listen, you'd be surprised who my customers were, doctors, lawyers, psychologists, right on down the line.
Sometimes at these conventions in Las Vegas, arrangements were made to bring underaged girls -- we're talking about girls 12, 13, 14 years old, to the conventions. The pimps and the organized gangs take them there, and they make a tremendous amount of money just over the weekend.
KING: Wow. Thank you, Amanda. The highest risk for kids being trafficked is endangered runaways. As we go to break, you'll see pictures of runaways provided by their families to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. We don't have specific evidence that these kids are being trafficked, but if you have any information about them or their well-being, call 1-800-The-Lost. We'll get a parents' heartbreaking story next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The preliminary test results asphyxiation as the cause of death.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And police say Shania's accused kidnapper is the one who killed her.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Farryville (ph) Police Department will be filing the following charges against Mario McNeil: first degree murder, first degree rape of a child.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police say that McNeil was the last to see Shania alive based on these surveillance pictures taken at the Comfort Inn in Sanford. And the charges against McNeil may not be the end of this case.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Bradley Lockhart's five-year-old daughter, Shania Davis, was raped and murdered last November. Shania's mother is accused of prostituting the child. She's charged with human trafficking and felony child abuse. What's the legal situation regarding Shania's mother right now, Bradley?
BRADLEY LOCKHART, FIVE YEAR OLD DAUGHTER RAPED AND MURDERED: Currently she's out on bail. There is no court date presently set at this time, as far as her to go back in front of the judge. They usually throw her up in front of the judge about every 30 to 60 days, I guess it's just pretty much a formality. But as of right now, no court dates have been set for Antoinette.
KING: Was this -- did you have a casual relationship with this woman? LOCKHART: It was a very, very short term relationship with Antoinette and the conception of Shania. After that, it was just an open relationship and the care of Shania, her feeling that it was best that she live with me, and that's the way it played out until 30 days prior to Shania's passing.
KING: And how did the mother manage to get her away from you and into the hands of these people?
LOCKHART: Well, basically I traveled for my job, and Shania was at my sister's house. And Shania was asking for her mother. My sister called Antoinette and asked if she could spend the weekend with her. My sister dropped her off at Antoinette's grandmother's house, because Antoinette was apparently at work. While Antoinette had her for that weekend, she decided that she wanted to -- after four years, she decided that she wanted to try to play her role as a mother, and tried to take care of her and raise her like a mother should, and protect her like a mother should.
Then 30 days later, my worst nightmare became a reality.
KING: Did you know anything about human trafficking before this?
LOCKHART: I had no clue about human trafficking. Looking back on it, if you would have asked me would I have ever thought of it or became a victim of it, I would have never thought in my wildest dreams that I would be sitting here talking to you as a victim of human trafficking and being exposed to it at this level.
It is so overwhelming. It's happening every day. It's happening in our -- right in our local communities, and we're turning a blind eye to it.
KING: How are you holding up?
LOCKHART: We struggle. We struggle. We have our moments as a family. We're still grieving, as well as many as others still grieve. I get letters and e-mails all the time, with concerns and care and love for Shania. We all know that she's up in heaven looking down on us smiling and encouraging us to stay strong and be her voice and speak loud and clear, as we're going to do here on November 13th in Piedmont Park in Atlanta. We're going to hold Shania Davis First Annual 5k Walk.
KING: Thank you, Bradley. According to FreeTheSlaves.net, slave holders use terms included bonded labor, attached labor and forced labor to avoid use of the word slave. We'll be back with a garment worker who was enslaved while working in this country.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you think it's possible when you have lost your humanity to ever find it again?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, I do. But it's yours to find. No one can take it away from you. Not one man, not 100.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: That was a scene from the TV mini-series "Human Trafficking," starring our guest Mira Sorvino. She was nominated for an Emmy for her performance
. Joining us is Florencia Molina, survivor of human trafficking. She was enslaved in the garment industry in the United States.
(NEWS BREAK)
KING: Flora Molina joins us. She was enslaved in a dress-making shop in Los Angeles. How?
FLORENCIA MOLINA, FMR. GARMENT INDUSTRY SLAVE: I was brought to the United States with a promise of -- to have a good job and a place to stay. And I was promised to make money, to send money to send to my family. I was an easy target for my trafficker because I was a mother who had -- who had just lost my youngest lady. I couldn't take her to a better hospital and she passed away.
I was worried about my other three children, because I was working two jobs. I was cooking and cleaning houses. And I didn't make enough money to support my children. And at the time, I was taking sowing classes. One of the days, my sewing teacher came and offered me a great opportunity to go to the United States. When I get there, I will have a place to stay and work.
When I got to L.A., I was locked inside a shop. I was not allowed to go out to speak to anybody. And I had work 17 to 18 hours a day, seven days a week. And I was not allowed to go out or to speak to anybody. My trafficker is from the same town where I am from, so she knew my family. And she often written me of harming my family.
I was already there and I was really fearful for my children and my mother. I escaped and I was contacted with Cause. After I meet Cause, Cause helped me to get to my feet. They helped me to find a shelter and to get on my feet.
KING: We'll pick up with more. We're sorry we're so short on time.
We have some heroes on our show tonight. We're honoring another one right now. Each week, we have ask friends of CNN Heroes to tell us more about our top ten honorees. Here's a Hollywood actress who is doing terrific work on-screen and off. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
EVA MENDEZ, ACTRESS: Hello. I'm Eva Mendez. Last year, I had the honor of helping to recognize the great works of every-day people changing the world at CNN Heroes an All-Star Tribute. As a champion of the arts of elecium, I'm committed to creating joy in the lives of hospitalized children. Now I'm thrilled to help CNN introduce one of this year's top ten honorees. Now more than ever, the world needs heroes. GUADALUPE ARIZPE DE LA VEGA, CNN HERO: Juarez was a very nice place and now nobody can go out. In this moment of crisis, people have to have a secure place where healing goes on. My name is Guadalupe Arizpe de la Vega. I started the Hospital de la Familial, and it's in downtown Juarez.
We have been working there for 37 years with the community. Every day, we have from 800 to 1,000 people.
Some of them can pay. Some of them cannot pay. But we don't turn anybody away.
I believe that health is the most important of human rights. Life is all about empowering people. And it's very important to have an institution giving them hope for the future.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: To see all top ten CNN Heroes, vote for the one who inspires you the most, go to CNN.com/Heroes. All ten honored Thanksgiving night. Back with our remaining moments after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KING: Again, we want to apologize for having such limited time tonight. We thank Dan Rather for joining us. He'll be back with us again, we promise, another show on this. Thanks, Dan.
RATHER: Thank you, Larry.
KING: Ben, what happened to the shop owner who employed Flora? What happens to them?
SKINNER: At the moment, not much. First of all, the rare -- there are many rare things about Flora's case. But the first one that's most rare is that we heard about it. The vast majority of slaves in the world today we don't know about.
KING: She's a brave lady.
SKINNER: She is an absolutely brave lady. Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, let's add Flora Molina to that list. These are people that stand up and demand their humanity on behalf of all of us.
SORVINIO: And Flora helps other victims become survivors and Flora educates law enforcement to try to notice better the signs of trafficking. I have worked with Flora before. She's an amazing human being.
KING: What happened to the shop owner?
MOLINA: She was charged as an abusive employer, because my case was in the year 2002. In year 2000, the Protection Act was just past. So in early 2002, it was not a lot of information about it. So she paid a 75,000 fine and she was free. She got only a light sentence, six months of house arrest.
When she finished her sentence, she went and visit my mother, give to my mother 20 dollars for my mother to call her as soon as my mother finds out where I was. Since then, she has contacted my family several times. She's from the same town where I am from.
KING: Do you forgive her?
MOLINA: I can't forgive her, because she has done it to other people, not only to me. But I'm the only one who stands and fight back.
KING: Just an incredible story, Julia. I know everybody us is telling us how much you're -- she's responsible for this law, right?
SKINNER: Absolutely.
ORMOND: Well, I wouldn't say that. Nothing happens alone. We have -- Asset has been able to join a journey that's been a long time coming. But I want to talk of one success story if I may.
KING: We have about 40 seconds.
ORMOND: Fair trade is working with mango farmers in Haiti. The mango farmers get paid a wonderful premium for their work. They are going to be sold in Whole Foods. I think they're selling already.
President Clinton has said the mango selling of Haiti could be its direct path out. And that premium, the money that those farmers get, they decide to send their kids to school. Send a kid to school, you make it less vulnerable to be trafficked.
KING: You're saying buy the mangoes in Whole Foods?
ORMOND: Yes.
KING: Simply put, buy the mangoes at Whole Foods. You're helping people.
ORMOND: Go for the trade that helps people out of poverty.
KING: Thank you all very much. I'm sorry we didn't have more time. More -- we're going to do more on this. Jon Stewart's with us on Wednesday night. Jon Steward Wednesday night, live, right here.
Time now for Anderson Cooper and "AC 360." Anderson?
