Dr. Mohamed Mattar, Adjunct Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Protection Project at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies Conference on "Slavery in the 21st Century"
September 18, 2003
University of Central Florida
I am delighted to be invited by the University of Central Florida to speak on the problem of trafficking in persons.
And I am happy to be back after almost twenty years. Back in 1981 I was in University of Miami, finishing my master's in Comparative Law. Now I teach comparative law at Johns Hopkins University - SAIS. Florida is also special to me in another way, which is related to my work as the Co-Director of the Protection Project. That brings me to the Cadena Case. The most famous case in sex trafficking, United States v Cadena, which was decided in 1998 in Florida. In this case: Defendants trafficked female minors from Mexico to Florida for the purpose of prostitution The victims in this case were coerced to commit acts of prostitution. They were locked for months in a brothel and they were forced to do illegal abortions. Defendants were convicted under: - Section 1581 - Conspiring to hold a person in involuntary servitude
- Section 2422 - Inducing a minor to engage in prostitution
- Section 2421 - Transportation of persons for illegal sexual conduct- under the Mann Act.
The Protection Project sponsored one of the Cadena's victims to testify before Congress.
And Congress on October 28, 2000 passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. The Act changed the U.S. policy in several ways. The Act changed the criminal justice policy of the United States. The Act for the first time recognized trafficking as a specific offense, whether trafficking for sex or trafficking for labor. But the Act does not confuse sex with labor and does not make sex as a form of labor and that is why the term "sex work" is not a term which you will find in my vocabulary. And the Act recognizes trafficking as a serious crime: Under the Act, you get 20 years imprisonment, and the 20 years can be increased to life imprisonment if you are trafficking a child under the age of 14. And if you are traveling with the intent to engage in illicit sexual activity with a child, you commit a crime under the Sex Tourism Prohibition Improvement Act of 2002, which amended the 1994 Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Act. The Sex Tourism Act is now part of the Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2003, or "Protect Act", Section 105 "Penalties Against Sex Tourism." That brings me to another famous case, which makes Florida special, and that is United States v. Hersh of 1998. In this case Professor Hersh traveled from Florida to Honduras to have sex with young boys from ages 8 to 16, and he brought back a boy, age 15, by doing a false passport, and claiming that the boy was his adopted son, and enrolled him in a school in Florida in the morning and had sex with him at night. Professor Hersh was sentenced to a total of 105 years imprisonment. The Act also changed the immigration policy of this country. No longer is the trafficked person deported. The Act allows a trafficked victim to apply for a T visa, and there are 5,000 of them. Another shift in U.S. policy is to recognize trafficking in persons as a human rights violation and to treat the trafficked person as a victim, not a criminal, a victim who is entitled to basic rights. And I put together a Bill of Rights on behalf of victims of trafficking that includes: - not only the right to seek residency
- but the right to safety
- the right to privacy
- the right to legal representation
- and the right to civil compensation
- the right to medical care
- the right to social assistance
- and the right to return.
This is a significant shift in the human rights law of this country.
There is another significant shift, and that is the change of the foreign policy of this country. The Act makes trafficking in persons as important as fighting - weapons of mass destruction
- or terrorism
- or drug trafficking.
The Act mandates that the United States monitors the status of sever forms of trafficking in foreign countries. And you all know that this week Cuba, along with North Korea and Burma, have been subject to U.S. sanctions. They were placed in Tier 3 with Sudan and Liberia. Now we have 26 countries in Tier 1 and 80 countries in Tier 2. And the U.S. Department of State's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons keeps the pressure on countries to do something about trafficking. And trafficking is a significant problem. The CIA estimates that between 800 and 900 thousand women and children are trafficked annually around the world. And between 18 and 20 thousand are trafficked annually into this country. From what countries? - from Russia, Ukraine and Central Europe
- from Mexico, China, and Vietnam
To what states? Florida has a high rate of trafficking, as well as California, Texas, New York, Washington, Washington, DC, and Hawaii. For what purpose? Victims are trafficked to Florida for prostitution. You are all familiar with the Panhandle man, who owned an escort service and was charged with using it as a front for a prostitution ring. That was Russell Thomas Neal, who faced charges of: - using a minor in a sexual performance
- promoting sexual performance by a child
- procuring a person under age 18 for prostitution
- deriving support from the proceeds of prostitution
- and renting space for prostitution
These are all crimes under Chapter 796 of Florida Law on Prostitution. And perhaps Florida should consider enacting a law recognizing not only prostitution as an offense, but trafficking for the purpose of prostitution or for other purposes. Washington state has such a law, as well as Texas. Victims are also trafficked to perform illicit sexual activities in strip clubs in Florida. You are all familiar with Sergey S. Kobeltsyn, a Russian man, with alleged ties to the Russian organized crime, who bought two strip clubs, Pure Platinum and Solid Gold, for $ 8 million dollars, and Ludwig Fainberg, another Russian Mafia figure with alleged ties to Colombian drug traffickers, who runs a strip club called Porkys, which also likely involves trafficked women. And that is why we should go after not only the natural person, but the legal person, the corporate person, and if such person is involve4d in illicit sexual activities and is trafficking women to perform such activities, such person should be fined, his business license revoked, and his business enterprise shut down. We have to do something about the customer, the client, the one who is buying sexual services. And we also have to do something about the facilitator: - the strip club
- the escort service
- the taxi driver
- the advertisement agency
- the employment agency
- the adoption agency
- the matchmaking organization
And that brings me to the bride trafficking. You perhaps watched "The Birthday Girl". And women are trafficked into this country to be married, and in the name of the institution of marriage they become prostitutes, or they are forced to work in conditions of servitude.
They come from Southeast Asia and from Russia and other countries, and they become slaves in this country. Victims are trafficked to Florida to be domestic servants, and that is the maid trade. Russian and Central European women are responding to the ads in the local papers to work in the U.S. And they come here and work as maids in motels, and they are put in conditions of servitude, and they are not allowed to contact the outside world. They are denied freedom of movement. They only answer to their traffickers. That is labor trafficking. You are all familiar with Michael Allen Lee, who recruited homeless men from the streets of Orlando to work in Florida's citrus fields, and who paid them no more that $ 10 a day for working from dawn to dusk. Migrant workers work in the agriculture state as human chatteles, they are enslaved and they are helpless. But of course you have to understand the difference between smuggling and trafficking. If the person initiates his own smuggling, we do not consider him as a victim. And the state of Florida is doing something about enslavement of migrant workers. Recently, as I understand, a Florida district court (Ft. Pierce), sentenced Ramiro and Juan Ramos and their cousin Jose Luis Ramos to prison sentences ranging from 10 to 12 years for enslaving some 700 mostly undocumented Hispanic workers. And that is why the United Nations has two separate protocols supplementing the Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, one on smuggling of aliens, and the other is the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. The good news is that as of today, 31 countries have ratified the Protocol and we only need 40 instruments of ratification. The United States has yet to ratify the Protocol.
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