Posted by: jeffmooney | March 16, 2008

Slavery Thriving in Secret

Castro and Harrison, writing for the Daily News in Los Angeles, reported this story on slavery in America. Here is an excerpt.

A young Asian woman arrives in Southern California with the promise of a restaurant job and a generous invitation to live for free in her employer’s home as she acclimates to her new world.

“I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was living the American dream,” authorities said Thonglim Khamphiranon told friends in her native Thai language.

But the promise of $240 a month to work in a Thai restaurant in the San Fernando Valley turned out to be a nightmare.

Her passport was confiscated, Khamphiranon later told activists battling human trafficking, and her ties to the outside world were cut. For six years in the late 1990s, she slaved up to 18 hours a day both at her employer’s restaurant and at the woman’s home, where Khamphiranon slept on the floor and served her boss on her knees.

It happened not in some ethnic Third World pocket of Los Angeles but in an upscale neighborhood in Woodland Hills.

Go here for the entire story.

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