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Child maid trafficking spreads from Africa to US
2008-12-28
IRVINE, Calif. - Late at night, the neighbors saw a little girl at the kitchen sink of the house next door. They watched through their window as the child rinsed plates under the open faucet. She wasn't much taller than the counter and the soapy water swallowed her slender arms. Muzi.com News 10085390-1 (muzi.com)To put the dishes away, she climbed on a chair. Muzi.com News 10085390-2 (muzi.com) But she was not the daughter of the couple next door doing chores. She was their maid. Muzi.com News 10085390-3 (muzi.com) Shyima was 10 when a wealthy Egyptian couple brought her from a poor village in northern Egypt to work in their California home. She awoke before dawn and often worked past midnight to iron their clothes, mop the marble floors and dust the family's crystal. She earned $45 a month working up to 20 hours a day. She had no breaks during the day and no days off. Muzi.com News 10085390-4 (muzi.com) The trafficking of children for domestic labor in the U.S. is an extension of an illegal but common practice in Africa. Families in remote villages send their daughters to work in cities for extra money and the opportunity to escape a dead-end life. Some girls work for free on the understanding that they will at least be better fed in the home of their employer. Muzi.com News 10085390-5 (muzi.com) The custom has led to the spread of trafficking, as well-to-do Africans accustomed to employing children immigrate to the U.S. Around one-third of the estimated 10,000 forced laborers in the United States are servants trapped behind the curtains of suburban homes, according to a study by the National Human Rights Center at the University of California at Berkeley and Free the Slaves, a nonprofit group. No one can say how many are children, especially since their work can so easily be masked as chores. Muzi.com News 10085390-6 (muzi.com) Once behind the walls of gated communities like this one, these children never go to school. Unbeknownst to their neighbors, they live as modern-day slaves, just like Shyima, whose story is pieced together through court records, police transcripts and interviews. Muzi.com News 10085390-7 (muzi.com) "I'd look down and see her at 10, 11 -- even 12 -- at night," said Shyima's neighbor at the time, Tina Font. "She'd be doing the dishes. We didn't put two and two together." Muzi.com News 10085390-8 (muzi.com) ___ Muzi.com News 10085390-9 (muzi.com) Shyima cried when she found out she was going to America in 2000. Her father, a bricklayer, had fallen ill a few years earlier, so her mother found a maid recruiter, signed a contract effectively leasing her daughter to the couple for 10 years and told Shyima to be strong. Muzi.com News 10085390-10 (muzi.com) For a year, Shyima, 9, worked in the Cairo apartment owned by Amal Motelib and Nasser Ibrahim. Every month, Shyima's mother came to pick up her salary. Muzi.com News 10085390-11 (muzi.com) Tens of thousands of children in Africa, some as young as 3, are recruited every year to work as domestic servants. They are on call 24 hours a day and are often beaten if they make a mistake. Children are in demand because they earn less than adults and are less likely to complain. In just one city -- Casablanca -- a 2001 survey by the Moroccan government found more than 15,000 girls under 15 working as maids. Muzi.com News 10085390-12 (muzi.com) The U.S. State Department found that over the past year, children have been trafficked to work as servants in at least 33 of Africa's 53 countries. Children from at least 10 African countries were sent as maids to the U.S. and Europe. But the problem is so well hidden that authorities -- including the U.N., Interpol and the State Department -- have no idea how many child maids now work in the West. Muzi.com News 10085390-13 (muzi.com) "In most homes, these girls are not allowed to use so much as the same spoon as the rest of the family," said Hany Helal, the Cairo-based director of the Egyptian Organization for Child Rights. Muzi.com News 10085390-14 (muzi.com) By the time the Ibrahims decided to leave, Shyima's family had taken several loans from them for medical bills. The Ibrahims said they could only be repaid by sending Shyima to work for them in the U.S. A friend posed as her father, and the U.S. embassy in Cairo issued her a six-month tourist visa. Muzi.com News 10085390-15 (muzi.com) She arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on Aug. 3, 2000, according to court documents. The family brought her back to their spacious five-bedroom, two-story home, decorated in the style of a Tuscan villa with a fountain of two angels spouting water through a conch. She was told to sleep in the garage. Muzi.com News 10085390-16 (muzi.com) It had no windows and was neither heated nor air-conditioned. Soon after she arrived, the garage's only light bulb went out. The Ibrahims didn't replace it. From then on, Shyima lived in the dark. Muzi.com News 10085390-17 (muzi.com) She was told to call them Madame Amal and Hajj Nasser, terms of respect. They called her "shaghala," or servant. Their five children called her "stupid." Muzi.com News 10085390-18 (muzi.com) While the family slept, she ironed the school outfits of the Ibrahims' 5-year-old twin sons. She woke them, combed their hair, dressed them and made them breakfast. Then she ironed clothes and fixed breakfast for the three girls, including Heba, who at 10 was the same age as the family's servant. Muzi.com News 10085390-19 (muzi.com) Neither Ibrahim nor his wife worked, and they slept late. When they awoke, they yelled for her to make tea. Muzi.com News 10085390-20 (muzi.com) While they ate breakfast watching TV, she cleaned the palatial house. She vacuumed each bedroom, made the beds, dusted the shelves, wiped the windows, washed the dishes and did the laundry. Muzi.com News 10085390-21 (muzi.com) Her employers were not satisfied, she said. "Nothing was ever clean enough for her. She would come in and say, 'This is dirty,' or 'You didn't do this right,' or 'You ruined the food,'" said Shyima. Muzi.com News 10085390-22 (muzi.com) She started wetting her bed. Her sheets stank. So did her oversized T-shirt and the other hand-me-downs she wore. Muzi.com News 10085390-23 (muzi.com) While doing the family's laundry, she slipped her own clothes into the load. Madame slapped her. "She told me my clothes were dirtier than theirs. That I wasn't allowed to clean mine there," she said. Muzi.com News 10085390-24 (muzi.com) She washed her clothes in a bucket in the garage. She hung them to dry outside, next to the trash cans. Muzi.com News 10085390-25 (muzi.com) When the couple went out, she waited until she heard the car pull away and then she sat down. She sat with her back straight because she was afraid her clothes would dirty the upholstery. Muzi.com News 10085390-26 (muzi.com) It never occurred to her to run away. Muzi.com News 10085390-27 (muzi.com) "I thought this was normal," she said. Muzi.com News 10085390-28 (muzi.com) ___ Muzi.com News 10085390-29 (muzi.com) If you could fly the garage where Shyima slept 7,000 miles to the sandy alleyway where her Egyptian family now lives, it would pass for the best home in the neighborhood. Muzi.com News 10085390-30 (muzi.com) The garage's walls are made of concrete instead of hand-patted bricks. Its roof doesn't leak. Its door shuts all the way. Shyima's mother and her 10 brothers and sisters live in a two-bedroom house with uneven walls and a flaking ceiling. None of them have ever had a bed to themselves, much less a whole room. At night, bodies cover the sagging couches. Muzi.com News 10085390-31 (muzi.com) Shown a snapshot of the windowless garage, Shyima's mother in the coastal town of Agami made a clucking sound of approval. Muzi.com News 10085390-32 (muzi.com) "It's much cleaner than where many people here sleep," said Helal, the child rights advocate. He explains that Shyima's treatment in the Ibrahim home is considered normal -- even good -- by Egyptian standards. Muzi.com News 10085390-33 (muzi.com) Even though many child maids are physically abused, child labor is rarely prosecuted because the work isn't considered strenuous. Many employers even see themselves as benefactors. Muzi.com News 10085390-34 (muzi.com) "There is a sense that children should work to help their family, but also that they are being given an opportunity," said Mark Lagon, the director of the U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Muzi.com News 10085390-35 (muzi.com) That's especially the case for well-off families who transport their child servants to Western countries. Muzi.com News 10085390-36 (muzi.com) In 2006, a U.S. district court in Michigan sentenced a Cameroonian man to 17 years in prison for bringing a 14-year-old girl from his country to work as his unpaid maid. That same year, a Moroccan couple was sentenced to home confinement for forcing their 12-year-old Moroccan niece to work grueling hours caring for their baby. Muzi.com News 10085390-37 (muzi.com) In Germantown, Md., a Nigerian couple used their daughter's passport to bring in a 14-year-old Nigerian girl as their maid. She worked for them for five years before escaping in 2001. In Germany, France, the Netherlands and England, African immigrants have been arrested for forcing children from their home countries to work as their servants. Muzi.com News 10085390-38 (muzi.com) In several of these cases, the employers argued that they took the children with the parents' permission. The Cameroonian girl's mother flew to Detroit to testify in court against her daughter, saying the girl was ungrateful for the good life her employers had provided her. Muzi.com News 10085390-39 (muzi.com)
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