Money and Economy
Human Trafficking Charity Sued for Misuse of Funds
Published October 05, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
It crushes me to report that not all human trafficking charities may be what they seem. Richard Blumenthal, Attorney General for Connecticut, announced on Friday that he was filing a lawsuit against Raymond Bechard, Founder of Ahava Kids, Inc., claiming he spent over $100,000 in donations intended to help victims of human trafficking and orphaned children living with HIV/AIDS, on himself. Spending donors' money meant to help survivors of slavery and people living with AIDS on yourself? That's so pathetic I can't think of a witty insult.
The donations Ahava Kids received, donors were told, would go toward operating a hotline for human trafficking victims and safe houses in Connecticut and Georgia, as well as to help women and children in prostitution and their HIV positive children access life-saving AIDS medications. However, according to Blumenthal, Bechard spent the charity's money on himself at restaurants and stores, including authorizing the charity to "loan" $67,000 to for-profit companies Bechard owned.
This news didn't shock me, because I actually heard a rumor that Ahava Kids was not a legitimate organization a few months back from a listerve. I wrote Raymond Bechard an email asking him to address the allegations that were being made against him. He replied promptly. However, all the evidence I could find amounted to his word against the word of the person who leveled the allegations, so I refrained from publishing any of the our interview until I had more concrete information. However, in light of this lawsuit and the Connecticut AG's allegations, I think it appropriate to share my questions and his responses. These are edited for length and to remove the names of specific individuals and organizations who have not been accused of any wrongdoing.
Amanda: The allegations against you claim no other reputable organizations that assists child victims of trafficking have ever heard of you, seen a victim you have served, or seen a shelter you run.
Bechard: We have worked with several organizations -- from service providers to law enforcement. In fact, ************* of ************ is quoted on the back of my 2006 book, Unspeakable - The Hidden Truth Behind the World's Fastest Growing Crime. Overall, *************** seems to be implying that we do not work with victims or have 'shelters.' We have worked with several victims here in the United States and have Safe Houses for young adults in Connecticut and Georgia.
Amanda: Another one is that no one answers your hotline.
Bechard: An electronic record is kept of all calls that come in to our Hotline. Our records show that ************ tried the Hotline once, on March 23rd, at 3:02 PM. I have no explanation as to why this one call was not answered, but we did respond immediately in an email. If ************ is passing judgement on our Hotline system by one attempted phone call, to which we did respond, this seems completely unfair. I apologize for the missed call, however, it should be known that we are now working with a 19 year old victim from Connecticut who called the hotline last week as a result of our Cybervention efforts.
Amanda: It seems no one knows where your shelters are.
Bechard: This is not only untrue, but completely inaccurate. First, the ministries from which we lease the facilities are fully aware of their location and purpose, as are our Board members, our staff and others. Second, they are not 'shelters,' they are Safe Houses for young adult victims of human trafficking and prostitution. As such, yes, their locations are kept in the strictest confidence. This is for the protection of the survivors who may stay there and our staff.
Earlier in the email, he indicates that the accusations that Ahava Kids was not legitimate are unfair and leveled because his organization "has a Hebrew name" and he is a Christian male. In their investigation, the AG's office found that a legitimate safe house does exist, but it was barely used. This finding seems to jive with what Blechard was defending himself against to me -- his organization wasn't a complete sham. And from the facts that have come out so far, it seems that it wasn't. Some of the hundreds of thousands of dollars Bechard accepted in donations trickled down to trafficking victims and AIDS orphans.
But when you're taking people's money and telling them it's going to heal children surviving slavery, trickle-down economics just isn't good enough.
Photo credit: apdk
Buying a Slave's Freedom: What Not to Do
Published October 03, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
When I was just out of college, I had a job answering phones for an anti-trafficking NGO, which meant I got a lot of interesting calls. One day a pastor called to say that his church had been conducting fundraisers all year long and had raised just under $1 million to help trafficking victims. He estimated this was enough to buy hundreds of women and children out of prostitution. He was planning to take a team of five to Thailand in two weeks, and wanted to know if someone from my NGO would come along to help them find the best places to buy these women. At this point in the conversation, I had so many red flags going up in my head that my brain felt like it was full of cheerleaders on No-Doz being trained for air traffic control. So I talked him through the reasons why buying a trafficked person's freedom is not a good idea. Here's what I told him:
First and most importantly, what do you think a trafficker will do with the money he gets when you buy a slave from him? He might buy himself a nice car or something else, but chances are he's going to use it to traffic more people and make more money. Like any entrepreneur, he'll invest his returns (which you're giving him) in his business. So if you pay $2000 to free a women who is in prostitution against her will, the trafficker might be able to find two more women for that amount to enslave. Give a trafficker money, and he'll use it to traffic more people.
Secondly, by buying a person's freedom you're putting a financial value on that human life just as surely as the traffickers do. How do you negotiate a price? Is a man or a woman worth more? An adult or a child? When you buy slaves, even if it's to buy their freedom, you reinforce the human trafficking culture -- that the freedom of any individual has a price tag.
Lastly, when the penalty for trafficking people is more money and no jail time, trafficking becomes a much more attractive industry for criminal entreprenuers. The drug dealer and the arms trader both risk prison if they are found out, but when you buy people back from human traffickers, they profit without the punishment. A practice of buying freedom is a good way to encourage more people to go into the trafficking business.
The pastor who called me that day had the best of intentions and had worked hard to raise money to help trafficking victims. He just didn't understand that flying to Thailand to buy women from traffickers with cash would have all sorts of bad results, not to mention be dangerous for him and his team. Luckily, after a couple longs talks, he changed his plan and instead used to money to fund local Thai NGOs to identify and remove victims to safety and to train law enforcement to find and prosecute traffickers. He ended up helping hold traffickers accountable for their crimes, not encouraging them to commit more.
When people learn about the reality of modern-day slavery they often react passionately and emotionally. They want to ride in on a white horse with a stack of American dollars and free people. It's not bad to have this emotional reaction, but to do the most good, you need a different approach. Making a donation, volunteering, and writing letters to the government may not feels as exciting as as sureptitious trip to Thailand to buy slaves and set them free, but it helps more people out of slavery while maintaining their humanity. And while it may not make you feel like a hero, the survivors who now have their freedom thanks to you might disagree.
Photo credit: amagill
In Recession, 35% of Asians in Prostitution Are Children
Published October 01, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
I was heartened to hear today that the IMF says the global recession is over, but they might have a hard time convincing the thousands of children who are now being forced into commercial sex as a result of the recession in Southeast Asia that bluer skies are ahead. UNICEF estimates that now up to 35% of people in prostitution in the Mekong sub-region are between 12 and 17 years old. Sorry, IMF, but the recession's not over for them just yet.
35% is a huge number- just over one third. Statistically speaking, if you went to this part of Asia and had sex with three "women" in prostitution, one of them would be a child. Children are not a small portion of the commercial sex industry, but a major sustainer of it. To those individuals who argue that trafficking victims make up a tiny portion of people in prostitution and that the vast majority are in the industry willingly, I say "not in the Mekong sub-region". But why is it this part of the world that sees so much child exploitation?
A number of factors are contributing to an increase of children sold for sex in the region. Unemployment in Thailand is spiking, and thousands of factories and projects are being shut down. As poverty is increasing, living conditions are deteriorating and children are more likely to leave school and search for work. Even before the global recession, some countries like Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand relied on child sex tourism as a large contributor to GDP -- anywhere from 2% to 14%, according to the ILO. And with other forms of productions down, that percentage may be rising. Then, of course, there's always the reputation -- earned or not -- of lax laws and easily-bribed officials.
But these problems are not unique to Southeast Asia. Unemployment and factory closings are high everywhere, even here in the U.S. More children are becoming homeless and families are unable to pay school fees. Does this mean that perhaps Southeast Asia isn't the only region seeing an increase in child trafficking and child sex tourism? Sure it's the most famous region for child sex tourism, but other parts of the world -- places like Brazil, Costa Rica, and Mexico especially-- are also becoming common destinations for child sex tourists. I wonder if those areas aren't seeing this same increase.
On one hand it's great to have optimistic economic indicators that the recession is now over. But it's another thing to remember that the human reality of the recession will last for years, regardless of what the economists think looks promising. The 12-year-old girl who was forced into a brothel in Cambodia yesterday won't be released today because the IMF has announced the end of the recession. She'll be there for months, maybe years to come. Maybe she'll find a way out and maybe not. In either case, her recession is far from over.
Photo credit: youngsixta
An American Pedophile in Cambodia
Published September 18, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
Warning: The the videos and commentary in this post are graphic and disturbing, even for a human trafficking blog.
Despite increased international pressure and national efforts to end child sex tourism in Cambodia, it remains a top destination for pedophiles looking to have sex with children. The child sex tourism industry in Cambodia is also notoriously young, including children who are five, six, and seven years old as well as pre-teens and young teens. ABC Nightline conducted a raid on a suspected American pedophile, and what they found was disturbing.
The story of Harvey Johnson -- the man who is the subject of the Nightline sting -- is not unique. It's the story of a retired man who moves to Cambodia and sets up a gig as a volunteer English teacher, giving him access to hundreds of children. Some of the thousands of the sex tourists who travel to Cambodia each year use simialr guises to have access to children, and some just shop for them on the streets. Case in point: while the ABC film crew were researching the ease of buying kids for sex in Cambodia, the cops showed up. At first the reporters were worried, but it turns out the cops just wanted a chance to sell the kids that they had procured, and they started loading girls into the back of the reporters' van. With some police conducting sting operations and others selling children to tourists, it's hard to know who to trust in Cambodia.
It is disturbingly easy to have sex with a very, very young child as a Western tourist in Cambodia. They are being sold by brothel owners, slave brokers, and even their own mothers. The desperation of so many families is so great, that sex with children in Cambodia has become a full commodity, a resource for a family who otherwise would have no resources. And most disturbingly of all, there seems to be no shortage of buyers in this marketplace, no lack of American and European men who want to buy the youngest child possible. If Harvey Johnson is found guilty, there will be a long line of men waiting to rent his house and take his place as a teacher/abuser.
Johnson's case is still pending, but the police and reporters found his apartment to be filled with an disturbing and incriminating assortment of items that would lead most people to believe he was making is own child pornography and abusing the young girls who he taught. You can watch the videos of Nightline's sting operation here: Part1, Part 2, and Part 3 (ABC won't allow them to be embedded for proprietary reasons).
Photo credit: vivere.christus
Help End the Wage Theft Epidemic
Published September 09, 2009 @ 11:24AM PT
In the United States, wage theft -- employers illegally underpaying or financially exploiting employees -- has become an epidemic. This form of labor exploitation affects low-income workers, women, and immigrants disproportionally. For years the wage theft epidemic has spread, but now we have some hopeful opportunities to protect workers from exploitation.
Author and founder of Interfaith Worker Justice Kim Bobo describes the startling rates of wage theft in the U.S. in her book Wage Theft In America. Some of the harsh realities she shares are:
- 60% of nursing homes stole workers’ wages.
- 89% of non-monitored garment factories in Los Angeles and 67% of non-monitored garment factories in New York City stole workers’ wages.
- 25% of tomato producers, 35% of lettuce producers, 51% of cucumber producers, 58% of onion producers, and 62% of garlic producers hiring farm workers stole workers’ wages.
- Almost 50% of day laborers, who tend to focus on construction work, have had their wages stolen.
How has wage theft become an American epidemic? One reason is that labor laws preventing wage theft are rarely enforced. In part this is due to the Department of Labor's failure over the past decade to address the issue and the Bush administration's unabashed pandering to big business interests. In part it was due to government processes and policies that ranged from inefficient to outright deceptive. And it part it was due to a lack of resources and agents to enforce penalties for wage theft. In short, enforcement of labor laws has been about as tidy as a four-year-old eating ice cream on a tilt-a-whirl. But the good news is the Obama administration and Secretary Solis can (and I believe will) do something about it.
Secretary Solis has already proclaimed her commitment to reducing wage theft in America, in part by hiring 250 new agents to enforce labor violations. This is a huge improvement and a great start. However, you can make an even bigger dent in the wage theft epidemic by supporting the Employee Free Choice Act. The Employee Free Choice Act will allow workers to form a union when most of them want one and will help protect workers against wage theft and other exploitative violations, including human trafficking. It's important not to let the great strides toward protecting workers fall off the national agenda, or the wage theft epidemic will spread until it makes the swine flu look like a hangnail.
Photo Credit: Worker wearing protective gloves by NIOSH
A Video Guide to Fair Trade Grocery Shopping
Published September 05, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
Grocery shopping can be a daunting task, especially when you're trying to make more ethical purchases. That's why I've created a short video guide to looking for a few, basic Fair Trade items at your local grocery store.
Specialty stores and high-end grocery stores like Whole Foods often have a better selection of Fair Trade items. However, I went to a store in a middle-class neighborhood. They didn't have a lot of Fair Trade choices, but they had a few. Watch the video below to see what I found.
As this is my first big step into the world of vlogging, I'd love your thoughts and feedback. What sort of videos would you like to see on this site?
Feudalism Still Practised in Pakistan
Published September 01, 2009 @ 02:50PM PT
What do 13th century France and modern-day Pakistan have in common? Feudalism -- a system where a tiny minority of people own the vast majority of the land. In medieval Europe, feudalism was one of the major reasons innovation came to a screeching halt for several hundred years and leeches were considered medicinal. In modern-day Pakistan, feudalism is keeping men, women, and children in bonded labor across the country.
Here's how bonded labor in Pakistan works. Let's say I'm part of the 10% of men (and they are almost all men) lucky enough to own 90% of land in Pakistan. I need someone to harvest the crops on my land, so I go into a village and find a poor family with children. I offer to take two of their sons to my farm, and feed and house the kids. All the kids have to do is sign a contract to work off their room and board. I'm not going to pay the kids, but I'll send the family a portion of my crops. The kids sign, I take them to my farm, and I invent a massive debt their room and board is costing me that they can never pay off. So, I get free labor for life and for only the cost of a tiny potion of my harvest. The system is not very different from that of medieval Europe.
Previous efforts to address debt bondage and slavery in Pakistan have revolved around legal intervention, humanitarian efforts, and public education. These are all great things, but the fact is that Pakistan is operating as a feudal society. And in a feudal society, there are serfs, or as we now call them, bonded laborers. But unlike 13th century France where almost all serfs were exploited in agriculture, Pakistanis are exploited in a number of industries, including brick kilns, carpet weaving, mining, glass-bangle manufacturing units, tanneries, domestic work and beggary. It's a diversified portfolio of a feudal society, but its still the dark ages.
In order to address bonded labor in Pakistan, we need a new approach which takes into account the archaic systems Pakistan has long relied on. Otherwise, Pakistan might never see its own Renaissance.
Photo credit: Little Farmer by Sparkle_lavalamp
