These cases happen from time to time. More often than we want to admit, to be honest.

The two tiny Indonesian women know just a handful of English words. They know Windex. Fantastik (the cleanser, not the adjective). They know the words Master and Missus, which they were taught to use in addressing the Long Island couple they served as live-in help for five years in the sylvan North Shore hamlet of Muttontown.

Their employers, Varsha Sabhnani, 35, and her husband, Mahender, 51, naturalized citizens from India, have been on trial in U.S. District Court here for the past month. They are charged with what the federal criminal statutes refer to as involuntary servitude and peonage, or, in the common national parlance since 1865, the crime of keeping slaves.

The two women, the government charged in its indictment, were victims of “modern-day slavery.”

It is a rarely prosecuted crime. But since passage of the 2000 federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act, prosecutions have increased from less than a handful nationwide per year to about a dozen. The law is probably best known for its focus on prostitution and child-sex traffickers; yet in the last few years, in a few highly publicized cases like the SabhnanisÂ’, federal and state task forces set up to deal with sex trafficking have also begun to focus on the exploitation of domestic workers.

Last year, the wife of a Saudi prince was convicted in Boston for keeping two house servants for three years in virtual slavery. In 2005, two doctors in Wisconsin were convicted of holding a Philippine woman as an indentured servant for 20 years. Federal prosecutors won convictions in 2003 against a Maryland couple who kept a Brazilian woman in their home as a servant for 15 years, paying her nothing.

What is particularly frightening is that a number of incidents have involved foreign diplomats -- people who can hide behind their diplomatic immunity for protection. We need to clarify that slavery cases are exempt from the usual diplomatic immunity cases as a crime against humanity. And we need to prosecute all cases of slavery -- whether those of individuals forced into prostitution or those held hostage as domestic servants -- to the fullest extent of the law.

Posted by: Greg at 11:36 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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