The Cellar - Modern day slavery

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- - Modern day slavery (http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=19111)

skysidhe

12-29-2008 12:53 PM

Modern day slavery

I moving story. I think it deserved it's own thread.

http://news.aol.com/article/child-ma...ds-from/288230

RVINE, Calif. (Dec. 29) -- Late at night, the neighbors saw a little girl at the kitchen sink of the house next door. They watched through their window as the child rinsed plates under the open faucet. She wasn't much taller than the counter and the soapy water swallowed her slender arms.But she was not the daughter of the couple next door doing chores. She was their maid.

Trilby

12-29-2008 01:29 PM

They don't say how the slave-owning family got so rich---they came to America, lived in a Tuscan-like villa, slept late, didn't work and had all those children? WTF? Must be drug runners.

skysidhe

12-29-2008 01:33 PM

good questions

Mine were if the girl got her pay and if she was allowed to send any to her mother. I imagine not very much if so.

I am glad someone turned them in and the girl was adopted. A happy ending.

Cloud

12-29-2008 02:22 PM

http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=1...hlight=slavery

Pie	12-29-2008 02:54 PM

Did anyone get down to this part:

Quote:

Originally Posted by AP

EPILOGUE: On a recent afternoon in Cairo, Madame Amal walked into the lobby of her apartment complex wearing designer sunglasses and a chic scarf.
After nearly two years in a U.S. prison cell, she's living once more in the spacious apartment where Shyima first worked as her maid. The apartment is adorned in the style of a Louis XIV palace, with ornately carved settees, gold-leaf vases and life-sized portraits of her and her husband.
She did not agree to be interviewed for this story.
Before the door closed behind her, a little girl slipped in carrying grocery bags. She wore a shabby T-shirt. Her small feet slapped the floor in loose flip-flops. Her eyes were trained on the ground.
She looked to be around 9 years old.

Very sad. You can change the life of one person, but the other 1.1 billion are still out there.

xoxoxoBruce

12-29-2008 03:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by skysidhe (Post 517340)

Mine were if the girl got her pay and if she was allowed to send any to her mother. I imagine not very much if so.

She was probably still working off the loans her family took against her future.

Pie	12-29-2008 08:38 PM

As far as I can tell, she disowned her Egyptian family. She didn't want to send them money -- she hadn't spoken to them in years.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AP

Investigators arranged for her to speak to her parents. She told them she felt like a "nobody" working for the Ibrahims and wanted to come home. Her father yelled at her. "They kept telling me that they're good people," Shyima recounted in a recent interview. "That it's my fault. That because of what I did my mom was going to have a heart attack."
Three years ago, she broke off contact with her family. Since then she has refused to speak Arabic. She can no longer communicate in her mother tongue.

xoxoxoBruce

12-29-2008 11:59 PM

Yes, but this was after being rescued... and years of therapy.

skysidhe

12-30-2008 09:43 AM

Her family would owe the loans sure but they would have no legal right to her money? Unless out of the kindness of her heart or to settle the adoption proceedings? I mean maybe that was used as leverage?

Clodfobble

12-30-2008 11:38 AM

I think the legal rights of Egyptian peasants who are so poor they have to "lease" their daughters into slavery are shaky at best. Besides that, they had no interest in working to get their daughter back--her enclosed garage with no heat or light was still better than their shack in Egypt, and they felt she was ungrateful for what she had. They came to the U.S. to testify against her when she was fighting for her freedom.

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