By Tom Paquette
FEDERAL PROSECUTOR CAROLINE WITTCOFF: “Under-reporting is the main problem in apprehending and prosecuting human traffickers. Victims are afraid to run away or report their captors to authorities out of fear for their own lives or the lives of their loved ones. As trafficking rings have ties all the way back to their home countries, this is a very real danger.” she was a teenager from an impoverished village in Bangladesh. The American couple offered her transport to America and a better life: a nice job as their nanny and housekeeper, wages and opportunity. The dream offer dissolved into a nightmare as soon as she reached sunny Southern California. The couple informed her she owed them a huge sum for bringing her into the country and forced her to work without wages for years in their home. There she was repeatedly raped and beaten by the husband and abused by the wife. After three failed attempts, and with the help of good samaritans, she finally escaped.
This is just one of the stunning, real-life anecdotes recounted in a series of “Slavery Today” panel discussions on the multibillion-dollar human trafficking industry which, experts say, has grown to epidemic levels in Southern California.
The panels, sponsored by the Foundation for Human Rights and Tolerance and held in Hollywood, recognized the United Nations International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition. At the kick-off event, Lynsey Bartilson, star of the WB network’s “Grounded for Life,” told attendees, “The modern day slave trade is largely sexual trafficking, which Hollywood glamorizes in movies like ’Pretty Woman,’ but the harsh reality is that most of the girls involved are sold into a life of slavery.”
FEDERAL PROSECUTOR CAROLINE WITTCOFF: “Under-reporting is the main problem in apprehending and prosecuting human traffickers. Victims are afraid to run away or report their captors to authorities out of fear for their own lives or the lives of their loved ones. As trafficking rings have ties all the way back to their home countries, this is a very real danger.” she was a teenager from an impoverished village in Bangladesh. The American couple offered her transport to America and a better life: a nice job as their nanny and housekeeper, wages and opportunity. The dream offer dissolved into a nightmare as soon as she reached sunny Southern California. The couple informed her she owed them a huge sum for bringing her into the country and forced her to work without wages for years in their home. There she was repeatedly raped and beaten by the husband and abused by the wife. After three failed attempts, and with the help of good samaritans, she finally escaped.
This is just one of the stunning, real-life anecdotes recounted in a series of “Slavery Today” panel discussions on the multibillion-dollar human trafficking industry which, experts say, has grown to epidemic levels in Southern California.
The panels, sponsored by the Foundation for Human Rights and Tolerance and held in Hollywood, recognized the United Nations International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition. At the kick-off event, Lynsey Bartilson, star of the WB network’s “Grounded for Life,” told attendees, “The modern day slave trade is largely sexual trafficking, which Hollywood glamorizes in movies like ’Pretty Woman,’ but the harsh reality is that most of the girls involved are sold into a life of slavery.”
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