The Modern Slave

THE MODERN SLAVE THE MODERN ASLAVE GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS CRISIS Due to its underground nature, the extent of modern slavery is hard to measure. However, an estimated 48 million people are currently enslaved worldwide in bondage, varying from forced labour to sex trafficking. While we tend to think of slavery as an historical issue, there are more slaves today than at any other point in human history. Slavery is not only an international problem, but a local one: roughly 4300 people are thought to be enslaved in Australia and 800 in New Zealand, forced by criminals into work and prostitution. In our globalised age, however, slaves do not have to live in our towns and cities for slavery participation to take place. A variety of products manufactured overseas are produced utilising slave labour. As a consequence, though they may be located many thousands of kilometres away, businesses and the public can be knowingly, or innocently, supporting slavery elsewhere. ROTARYDOWNUNDER.ORG | 19 | THE MODERN SLAVE WHAT IS SLAVERY? Forced Labour Human beings are forced to work under the threat of “Modern slavery”, sometimes violence and for no pay. These called “Human Trafficking”, is a slaves are treated as property and exploited to create a broad term that encompasses a product for commercial sale. number of criminal practices. It takes many forms today, but at all times it is slavery at its core. Domestic Servitude Employees working in private homes are forced or coerced into serving and/or fraudulently convinced that they have no option to leave. Bonded labour Individuals who are compelled to work in order to repay a debt and unable to leave until the debt is repaid. It is the most common form of enslavement in the world. Child labour Sexual Slavery Women, men or children who are and trafficking forced into the commercial sex Any enslavement – whether industry and held against their will forced labour, domestic by force, fraud or coercion. servitude, bonded labour or sex trafficking – of a child. Forced Marriage Women and children who are forced to marry another Rotary International 2017 Atlanta Convention without their consent or against their will. A major session at the RI Convention was dedicated to Human Trafficking. View videos of the Human Trafficking Panel Discussion and Rebecca Bender (see page 22) at http://www.riconvention.org/en/atlanta/videos | 20 | ISSUE 599 OCTOBER 2017 AUSTRALIAN AND THE MODERN SLAVE NEW ZEALAND SLAVERY CASES 01. A Filipino housekeeper arrived in Canberra, promised a new job working for a foreign diplomat. However, her employer took her passport, prevented her from speaking to anyone or leaving 02. the residence, and paid her $300 New Zealand recorded its first human trafficking conviction last a month for working from 6am to year for a man who arranged for 16 Fijian workers to enter 10:30pm, six days a week. Even when the country illegally. They departed their home town believing she took the garbage out, she was good work, accommodation and food awaited. One village accompanied to prevent celebrated a victim’s departure with a large ceremony – he was possible escape. the first villager to ever travel overseas. Each had raised hundreds of dollars from family and friends to pay the man and his accomplices, for what they were told were “administrative and filing fees”. Upon arrival, the Fijians found themselves sleeping on the floor of the man’s flat, granted lower pay than promised – and soon nothing at all. By not paying minimum entitlements or holiday pay, the convicted man made at least $100,000 from the group’s labour in his construction business and orchards he “rented” them to in the Bay of Plenty. He received a sentence of nine years 03. and six months. Around 2000 slaves in Australia are trapped in the sex trade – often duped into travelling overseas in search of a better life. One Thai woman believed she was travelling Down Under to begin a hairdressing apprenticeship. Instead, her passport was taken away and she 04. was pressed into sexual servitude Three years ago, a 14-year-old Sydney girl was married in a cultural to repay the “debt” incurred by ceremony to a drug gang member who raped and beat her on a regular her captors who funded her travel basis. She gave birth to a daughter, whom her husband then physically fees. What followed was a never- abused. Her family approved the union, with her father informing the girl ending cycle of lengthy hours, large she could only leave her husband “in a coffin”. volumes of clients and no contact Federal police investigated 69 incidents of forced or underage marriage with the outside world. in the 2015-16 year in Australia. The National Children’s and Youth Law Centre estimating around 250 incidences of this form of sexual slavery exist nationally at any one time. Situations where men use “introduction agencies” to contact overseas women motivated to marry to escape desperate poverty are also rife. These “mail-order brides” routinely become domestic and sexual slaves, scared or ignorant of how to seek help. ROTARYDOWNUNDER.ORG | 21 | THE MODERN SLAVE THE REBECCA BENDER STORY: A SURVIVOR OF SEX TRAFFICKING IN THE US As a teenager, Rebecca a building was an escort box all of us in our culture Bender was an honour roll service. He explained he believes. I was unaware student, a varsity athlete, had spent a lot of money what a coercive tactic was she graduated a year early to get her there, and she when the man I thought and was accepted into needed to earn it back. He was my boyfriend began Oregon State University. promised love and safety his manipulation. Because By 19, she was forced for her and her baby girl – of this misidentification, I into human trafficking and all she would have to do is never asked for help, law became addicted to drugs. wear a bikini and dance in enforcement never noticed Rebecca’s ordinary, a room. When she voiced and my family and friends middle-class life changed the fear that it sounded believed the same lies I the summer before she like prostitution, he hit her regurgitated to them. Many “Because I went to college; she fell across the face. points of interception could was never pregnant. As a 17-year-old Rebecca just wanted have taken place, but went single mother, Rebecca things to go back to the un-noticed.” handcuffed became progressively way they were. Even if she Angry at Rebecca for to a bed like socially isolated, with ran, where would she go? “using up all his money on her peers living a very And she didn’t know exactly drugs,” her trafficker sent the media different life of study and where her daughter was. her to rehab. portrays, I parties. It left her feeling Out of fear and hope It was there Rebecca thought I alone and unimportant as that things would change, found hope and salvation she struggled as a young she did as she was ordered, in God. However, she must not mother to put herself having sex with strangers, wasn’t identified as a sex be being through school. with all the money going trafficking victim, only a She became the into her trafficker’s pocket. drug addict. trafficked. target of a man who He would be gentle and As soon as she I didn’t fit told her he was a record promise her safety; then was released, she into the producer, promising a beat her and apologise. The enthusiastically returned to family life for her and her cycle repeated continuously, her “owner”. She believed stereotypical daughter. Now, Rebecca and she began to use drugs that, if she took Jesus to box all of us believes he intentionally to cope. By 21, she was a him, things would sought someone in her full-blown cocaine addict. get better. in our culture circumstances – but her “As a survivor of sex They didn’t. believes.” teenage-self was smitten. trafficking in America, It didn’t take long for Six months after they I can’t begin to tell you her to be sold between met, he told her he wanted how often victims are two more traffickers, the to marry her, but she would misidentified,” Rebecca final being a notorious have to move with him said. “We are not in a trafficker known for his to Las Vegas for his work. third world country, so use of extreme control and During those six months trafficking is going to look violence. She was beaten of dating, he groomed very different today in more than any other her gradually, expanding our modern, developed woman. While he kept her boundaries with society. Misidentification a loving family façade to hypersexuality and pushing and learning the signs are the public and Rebecca’s her in areas she never crucial to help victims get daughter, now five or thought she’d venture. out of sexual exploitation. six years old, he would The night they arrived in “Because I was never often threaten the child’s Vegas, he told her to dress handcuffed to a bed wellbeing if Rebecca up for a night touring the like the media portrays, didn’t comply. city. But, instead of a casino I thought I must not be She had several failed or a club, he drove her to being trafficked. I didn’t attempted escapes resulting a dead-end street. Inside fit into the stereotypical in harm. | 22 | ISSUE 599 OCTOBER 2017 THE MODERN SLAVE trafficking in the US and abroad. Soon, the Rebecca Bender Initiative was born.

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