July 07, 2010 06:17 AM
For 30 Ukrainian immigrants looking for a better life, moving to the United States and working for $500 a month cleaning department stores sounded like a great opportunity, a chance to live out their own version of the American Dream. Unfortunately, it was a classic hiring trap, orchestrated by the five Botsvynyuk brothers, also from the Ukraine. Employed by the Botsvynyuk's so-called cleaning business, the workers were outsourced to clean those department stores, but for barely $100 a month, with 16-hour shifts every day.
Four out of five of the brothers have been arrested and charged with human trafficking crimes in and around Philadelphia between 2000 and 2007. One might wonder how a group so large could be enslaved for so long, particularly when employed in such public places, like Wal-Mart, Kmart, Target, and Safeway. However, it appears the Botsvynyuk brothers read their How to Be a Human Trafficker Handbook.
After luring their victims over to the U.S. with promises of jobs, food, and housing, the brothers immediately seized all travel documents. They physically and emotionally battered their new "employees" with regular kicks, punches, and threats to the workers' families back home. One woman in the group was continually and viciously raped. And each of the workers was debt-bonded to the brothers, owing upwards of $10,000 for entry into the country.
Sleeping five and six people to a single room, the workers had nowhere to go. Could they have told an outsider about their situation and appeal for help? Maybe with the help of an interpreter — and the unfathomable level of courage it would take to speak out against their captors.
The involved department stores have, of course, absolved themselves of any responsibility in this case; how, after all, could they have known their outsourced janitorial staff was actually a group of slaves? It is curious, though, that companies can be so disconnected from the people who work in their stores. And by "curious," I mean sad. But I guess cheap labor is, well, cheap — so why (aside from the law) should a business be fussing over whether that cheap labor is actually slave labor? I suspect, as I once learned while training at a certain shall-remain-nameless corporation that was both giant and impersonal, "It's all about the Benjamins."
Additionally, if uneducated about human trafficking, it can be hard to know what to look for. A neighbor of the Ukrainian immigrants noted that aside from not speaking English very well, they mostly "kept to themselves." Free the Slaves offers information on the signs of slavery, which you can check out here. A few of those checkpoints — all of which were applicable in this situation — are "afraid to discuss him or herself in front of others," "not free to change employers," and "has had his or her passport or other documents taken away."
Be mindful of the people who surround you, and if you suspect human trafficking is afoot, call the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline at 1-888-373-7888.
Photo credit: Robert S. Donovan
Angela Longerbeam is a freelance writer and pop culture addict fighting to end modern-day slavery with an MFA degree and irrepressible snark.
Ukrainian Brothers Run Trafficking Ring in Not-So-Sunny Philadelphia | End Human Trafficking | Change.org
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