Sex Slavery in Seattle the Tip of a Global Scourge

To most Americans, slavery is something related to skin color that ended in the 19th century. But today there is a new growth of slavery — sex slavery — that affects millions of people of all colors and reaches into almost every country in the world, even ours.

Federal agents and Seattle police showed recently that this different kind of slavery has reached the civil environs of Seattle. John McKay, U.S. attorney for Western Washington, announced the indictment of five men for operating a prostitution ring in which Asian women were lured to the Northwest with false promises of schooling and jobs, and then coerced into prostitution to pay off financial debts.

At least 14 women were effectively imprisoned in a Seattle brothel and forced to service hundreds of men, according to charging documents. Their only respite came when they were transported back and forth from another brothel in Portland.

The charges by the U.S. attorney sound like the testimony heard over and over during the past few years by the House of Representatives Committee on International Relations.

For example, last year, “Maria,” a young woman from Vera Cruz, Mexico, testified that she had been approached by an acquaintance who promised her there were restaurant jobs in the United States where she could earn money for her impoverished daughter and parents.

“I was transported to Florida, and there one of the bosses told me I would be working at a brothel as a prostitute. I told him he was mistaken, and that I was going to be working at a restaurant, not a brothel. He said I owed him a smuggling debt and the sooner I paid it off, the sooner I could leave. I was 18 years old and I had never been far from home. I had no money or way to get back.”

What then happened to Maria is similar to hundreds of other accounts given to Congress and law-enforcement agencies.

“I was constantly guarded and abused. If anyone refused to be with a customer, we were beaten. If we adamantly refused, the bosses would show us a lesson by raping us brutally. We worked six days a week, 12 hours a day. Our bodies were sore and swollen. If anyone became pregnant, we were forced to have abortions, and the cost of the abortion was added to the smuggling debt.”

Why did young women like Maria not escape?

“The bosses carry weapons. They scare me. We were transported every 15 days to different cities. I knew if I tried to escape, I would not get far because everything was unfamiliar. The bosses said if we escaped, they would get the money from our families.”

A Seattle newspaper reader may conclude that while accounts by Maria or McKay are depressing, even shocking, they certainly must be unusual. Depressing and shocking, yes, but also increasingly common. And certainly not confined to the U.S., which probably contains just a small fraction of the victims of this new global slave trade.

Maria was rescued from her slavery by a federal raid, but her story has echoes around the world. False promises to young people, often as young as 13, theft of visas and passports, brutal rapes and beatings, threats to tell their parents, fill the accounts of victims.

The kind of operation described by McKay in Seattle is being repeated with thousands of variations all over the world. Not all the new slaves are forced into the sex trade. Sometimes, people are impressed as slaves into armies (such as in the Sudan), or smuggled as slaves to work in factories, on farms, or in homes (as in Haiti). But the majority of the over 700,000 people the U.S. State Department estimates were trafficked as slaves last year, and the millions more in previous years, were for sexual exploitation.

State Department reports and congressional hearings document that young women are taken from Moldova (sometimes sold by their parents) and trafficked to Yugoslavia. Young women are taken from Nigeria and trafficked to Western Europe. Young men are taken from Afghanistan and trafficked for sex to Pakistan. Young women are kidnapped from Kosovo refugee camps and transported to Italy. Young women are taken from North Korea to China and from Thailand and the Philippines to Japan and Australia.

The reality is that young people, mostly teenage girls, come from almost every one of the world’s poorer countries and end up in almost every country where there is a combination of sexual demand and money.

Prostitution may have taken place for thousands of years, but what the world faces now is a new phenomenon: the growth of sex slavery with millions of victims and billions of dollars for international organized crime.

In the age of exploration and settlement, slavery by color arose to meet a demand for cheap labor. In our present age of mass mobility and instant communication, a new slavery is growing to meet a demand for sex.

Driven by the testimony of young women like Maria, Congress — led by U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and former Rep. Sam Gejdenson, D-Conn. — passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act to combat international slavery, punish the slave traders and help the slave victims. A special Office of Trafficking in the State Department now monitors international efforts to defeat this 21st-century slavery, and President Bush has set up an interagency task force under Secretary of State Colin Powell to lead the fight.

The story that will unfold during the coming months in a Seattle courtroom may surprise Seattleites but it will not be news to the millions of sex slaves and their tormentors around the globe.

The effort to fight this scourge calls for the same passion and dedication that slavery by color aroused 150 years ago.

John R. Miller is a former congressman from the 1st District of Washington who served on the House Committee on International Relations. He is chairman of Discovery Institute in Seattle and teaches at Northwest Yeshiva High School on Mercer Island.