The data
Every case on SlaveryMap, drawn from public sources and shown with its location deliberately generalized to protect survivors.
631 of 1,631 cite a source · Updated
Showing 1,033–1,056 of 1,631
United States US
In November 2008, federal prosecutors charged five people with sex trafficking. The victims included young girls as young as 14 who were smuggled from Mexico and forced into prostitution in various homes and brothels in Miami-Dade County and across South Florida. They were beaten and kept in “stash houses” where they were imprisoned until being shipped out to private homes.
United States US
The trafficker has a history of sex trafficking and violent crimes, was charged in December 2006 with recruiting a 16-year-old Rogers girl into a life of prostitution and stripping jobs. On Monday, U.S. District Judge David Doty ordered McNeal to spend more than 24 years in federal prison, to be followed by a lifetime on supervised release. That made McNeal the first casualty in U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose's year-old initiative to crack down on human trafficking.
United States US
An elder woman in the community where the victim lived. The trafficker offered to let the teenage victim live in her home while the victim was having family problems. The victim accepted and moved in. For over two years the victim was locked in the home and was not allowed to leave. The trafficker was abusive and threatening and forced the young woman to care for the trafficker's children. The trafficker also forced the young woman to sell Khat. The trafficker stole the victim's identity and used it to collect government benefits for herself. After the young woman had escaped the trafficker continued to harass and threaten the victim.
United States US
A Somali family not related to the young girl. Instead they came to her village and approached her parents and asked if they could take the girl, their daughter, to America with them. The young girl's parents agreed. The family brought her to the U.S using a different name and reporting that the girl was their daughter. When the girl arrived to this country, the new family wanted her to do all the housework, baby-sit their other children and completely serve them. The family was also abusive to the young girl. When the young girl refused to cooperate, the family contacted the child protection authorities and reported that they could not keep the child. The young girl was taken by the child protection authorities and was raised in the foster system.
United States US
Four message parlors were raided. King County authorities say they were tipped off by federal immigration officials, who believed some of the young girls working as prostitutes may have been part of a human trafficking operation. Police arrested 4 women who ranged in age from 28-51. They were booked on various charges, including promoting prostitution and money laundering. The article did not say if the women were managers or the actual prostitutes who worked in the massage parlors. No men were arrested, but the article said that detectives seized the business records and customers who can be identified from the records will be contacted by detectives and police say charges are possible.
United States US
Juan and Judith Ramos trafficked two women across the U.S.-Mexico border, promising them good jobs. After arrival, the victims were put to work in the couple's Adult Daycare center, and occasionally in their home. In total, the victims worked 1,300 hours without pay before they escaped. They were also harassed and threatened by the couple. The victims were told if they did not cooperate, they would be deported.
Canada CA
On November 11, 2008, Vilutis arrested in Mississauga. He was charged with human trafficking, exercising control of a prostitute, living off the avails of prostitution, assault, two counts of uttering threats to cause bodily harm or death and possession of a controlled substance.
United States US
Three arrests were made total, including Jarkowsky and two employees*. *These employees are the victims. See below. These two were bonded out of jail but are scheduled to appear in court in September 2008. The Island Spa was shut down.
Morocco MA
The female victim from Morocco signed a contract she couldn’t read and set off to earn money as a cleaner in Cyprus. But when she arrived, an agent told her she was going to work in a cabaret, have drinks with customers, and have sex with them if they wanted. She resisted and asked to be sent home but was told she had to repay her travel expenses first. She was raped. It was her first sexual experience. She knew if she returned to Morocco, her brother, a strict Muslim, would kill her for having sex before marriage and for damaging the family’s reputation.
Kenya KE
Kaneza Joseline (not her real name) recounts how her ordeal started. She was serving lunch in a busy Kigali restaurant where she was employed, when some regular customers, a Kenyan man and woman, approached her about taking a better job in Kenya. In her broken Swahili she indulged in a conversation that would redirect her path over the next few weeks. They promised her $100 USD per month to work fewer hours as a chef in an undisclosed restaurant that they purportedly ran in Kenya. After encouragement from her friends, Kaneza arrived in Nairobi to be welcomed by an unknown woman who had been given all of her information. She was immediately taken to a residential home, given work to wash their dogs, prepare children to go to school, cook for them, wash their cloths and other chores. All of which was the complete opposite of the job description originally reported to her by the couple in the Kigali restaurant. The owners started inquiring about her family and hurling insults towards her ethnic identity. Kaneza called her friends in Kigali regularly, hoping that as soon as she had been paid the $100 USD she would find her way home soon. After several weeks Kaneza was informed that she would be sent up country to an undisclosed location where her “work would begin”. In her efforts to resist, she was beaten, tied up with rope, and repeatedly spat upon. What had began, as a promising new career opportunity had become enslavement. Kaneza feared for her life.
United States US
The Nashville Police Department originally prosecuted the case under the first use of the state's anti-trafficking law. The district attorney, seemingly less interested in prosecuting the case, played softball with the accused traffickers and what should have been an 8-year sentence for trafficking sex victims across Florida, Georgia and Tennessee state lines. The traffickers ended up with 6 months and are likely to be deported by ICE.
United States US
Antonio (Tony) DiBenedetto, the owner of Rocco's Bakery, his wife, Anna and their two sons, Ferdinando and Giovanni are being sued for allegedly trafficking a family from Ecuador to work in their bakery. The family says Tony DiBenedetto beckoned them to the U.S. with the promise of labor, then kept them under a form of modern slavery, forcing them to work long hours below minimum wage and demanding sexual favors from the women in exchange for rent money.
United States US
In response to the Devastation brought on by Hurricane Katrina Signal International contracted with a recruiting firm run by Sachin Dewan. Dewan to bring 500 Indian construction workers on H2-B ten month visa. Signal and Dewan required the men to pay up to $20,000 to secure a position and visa. The skilled welders and construction workers were brought to the US under false pretense believing they were receiving permanent residency for their work. Many of the men were forced to live in cramped quarters with 20 other men and required to pay 1,050 for food and shelter.
United States US
Million Express Manpower Inc. recruited 22 Thai workers from Bangkok to work in the agriculture industry in the United States promising them H2A Visas, three years worth of work, and travel/living expenses. The recruiters required each worker to pay up to $11,000 in fees and confiscated their passports and tickets as collateral for payment. Upon arriving in the United State they were forced to work on Howell Farms in North Carolina until they were relocated to New Orleans. In New Orleans they worked on renovating hotels destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. The trafficking victims were forced to live in the dilapidated hotels while they were renovating them.
United States US
Husband and wife, Mary Yue Chueng and Hong Wei Yang, were owners of the Kimtex Factory which employed approximately 20 Chinese immigrants. In January of 2000, Cheung and Yang started to skim from their workers' ages. They stopped paying their employees altogether in May of 2000 and eventually closed and abandoned the factory in July. They were able to get away with this at the time by showing inspectors fake time records, hiding unpaid wages.
New Zealand NZ
One brothel owner was sentenced to 21 months imprisonment, one was sentenced to 300 hours of community service. The secretary of the latter owner was sentenced to 180 hours of community service, and the client was sentenced to one to two years' imprisonment.
Nigeria NG
The female victim was trafficked from Nigeria through Ghana to Italy, where she was forced to have sex with more than 25 men a day. If she resisted, her “madam” would beat her with a belt, starve her, and threaten to deport her. She would rotate through Turin, Rome, and Milan, enduring mental torture and physical abuse at each base. Anita’s traffickers raped her several times, and she underwent several crude abortions. The victim survived, but some of her friends died in the ordeal.
United States US
Five men - four of them related: Amador Cortes-Meza, 34; Juan Cortes-Meza, 31; Francisco Cortes-Meza, 25; Raul Cortes-Meza, 21; and Edison Wagner Rosa Tort, 69. The Cortes-Meza family members, all Mexican nationals, were arrested June 5 in Norcross where they were living. Authorities took Tort, a legal permanent resident originally from Uruguay, into custody June 24 in Cartersville. They were charged with bringing at least 10 young Mexican women into the U.S. illegally and forcing them to work as prostitutes in metro Atlanta. The defendants allegedly used threats, coercion, and physical violence to force the girls to cooperate. The women were delivered to clients' apartments or homes and were required to have sex with up to 30 men per day (according to legal authorities). Prosecutors accuse the men of conspiring to seduce, entice, and recruit the women, ages 14-28, to travel to metro Atlanta from Mexico, with promises of legitimate jobs. Four women survivors involved were under 18 years old.
United States US
The FBI established the Innocence Lost Initiative in 2003 to fight child sex trafficking. To date, the work of the Innocence Lost Initiative has resulted in: 265 indictments; 365 convictions on a combination of state and federal charges; 46 criminal enterprises disrupted and 36 successfully dismantled; and Substantial sentences of convicted pimps, including two life sentences and several sentences ranging in length from 30 to 40 years. Efforts have led to the recovery of 577 child victims. The most recent sting, in Northern Virginia, resulted in the rescue of 47 children, many of whom had been reported missing.
United States US
Both Sacco and O'Connor where arrested, tried, and convicted. Sacco was convicted for sex trafficking, producing child pornography, and transporting a minor over state lines for sexual acts. He was sentenced to Life in prison. O'Connor was convicted for sex trafficking and producing child pornography. She was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison.
United States US
Victim was on probation and under the care of a temporary guardian after a history of sexual exploitation. Minor was on probation for charges and arrests associated with prostitution. Her guardian requested her release to service provider.
United States US
The case was investigated under the Innocence Lost National Initiative, the Department of Justice's Child Exploitation-Obscenity Section, by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and the FBI. The US attorney's office "aggresively prosecuted" the case. The federal government was able to apply jusrisdiction to the case because the camera used to take exploitative pictures of the child had been manufactured in Korea. Federal powers also applied because of interstate commerce that took place in the motel and because of the use of the Internet.
United States US
This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sanford C. Coats. Woods was sentenced on March 6, 2008 to serve 135 months in federal prison for sex trafficking of a minor by transporting a child under 18 years old from Oklahoma City to Amarillo, Texas, with the intent to engage in prostitution. Woods was ordered to serve 5 years of supervised release following his release from prison.
United States US
Xu and Tang would have some of the female Asian nationals apply for massage therapist licenses in Overland Park, the indictment says, and sign their names on the application as the manager of the massage parlors. Xu allegedly signed the massage license applications for at least 12 female Asian nationals to obtain massage licenses in Overland Park, and Tang allegedly signed the massage license applications for at least seven female Asian nationals to obtain massage licenses in Overland Park. However, the indictment says, Xu and Tang would also employ some of the female Asian nationals without having them obtain licenses. Xu, Liu, and Tang operated the businesses which allegedly offered and provided the prostitution and allowed illegal sexual services. Xu, Liu, and Tang instructed, provided, allowed or promoted for the female Asian nationals they employed to offer and provide sexual services to male patrons, the indictment says. This allegedly included offers of sexual services to identified male patrons and undercover law enforcement officers.