IRVINE, Calif. – 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.
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(Photo: AP Images / Ric Francis)Shyima Hall, 19, discusses her domestic enslavement Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2008, in Beaumont, Calif. Shyima was 10 when a wealthy Egyptian couple brought her from a poor village in Northern Egypt to work in their California home. She awoke before dawn and often worked past midnight to iron their clothes, mop the marble floors and dust the family's crystal. She earned $45 a month working up to 20 hours a day. The trafficking of children for domestic labor in the United States is an extension of an illegal but common practice among the upper class in Africa.
To put the dishes away, she climbed on a chair.
But she was not the daughter of the couple next door doing chores. She was their maid.
Shyima was 10 when a wealthy Egyptian couple brought her from a poor village in northern Egypt to work in their California home. She awoke before dawn and often worked past midnight to iron their clothes, mop the marble floors and dust the family's crystal. She earned $45 a month working up to 20 hours a day. She had no breaks during the day and no days off.
The trafficking of children for domestic labor in the U.S. is an extension of an illegal but common practice in Africa. Families in remote villages send their daughters to work in cities for extra money and the opportunity to escape a dead-end life. Some girls work for free on the understanding that they will at least be better fed in the home of their employer.
The custom has led to the spread of trafficking, as well-to-do Africans accustomed to employing children immigrate to the U.S. Around one-third of the estimated 10,000 forced laborers in the United States are servants trapped behind the curtains of suburban homes, according to a study by the National Human Rights Center at the University of California at Berkeley and Free the Slaves, a nonprofit group. No one can say how many are children, especially since their work can so easily be masked as chores.
Once behind the walls of gated communities like this one, these children never go to school. Unbeknownst to their neighbors, they live as modern-day slaves, just like Shyima, whose story is pieced together through court records, police transcripts and interviews.
"I'd look down and see her at 10, 11 — even 12 — at night," said Shyima's neighbor at the time, Tina Font. "She'd be doing the dishes. We didn't put two and two together."
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Shyima cried when she found out she was going to America in 2000. Her father, a bricklayer, had fallen ill a few years earlier, so her mother found a maid recruiter, signed a contract effectively leasing her daughter to the couple for 10 years and told Shyima to be strong.
For a year, Shyima, 9, worked in the Cairo apartment owned by Amal Motelib and Nasser Ibrahim. Every month, Shyima's mother came to pick up her salary.
Tens of thousands of children in Africa, some as young as 3, are recruited every year to work as domestic servants. They are on call 24 hours a day and are often beaten if they make a mistake. Children are in demand because they earn less than adults and are less likely to complain. In just one city — Casablanca — a 2001 survey by the Moroccan government found more than 15,000 girls under 15 working as maids.
The U.S. State Department found that over the past year, children have been trafficked to work as servants in at least 33 of Africa's 53 countries. Children from at least 10 African countries were sent as maids to the U.S. and Europe. But the problem is so well hidden that authorities — including the U.N., Interpol and the State Department — have no idea how many child maids now work in the West.
"In most homes, these girls are not allowed to use so much as the same spoon as the rest of the family," said Hany Helal, the Cairo-based director of the Egyptian Organization for Child Rights.
By the time the Ibrahims decided to leave, Shyima's family had taken several loans from them for medical bills. The Ibrahims said they could only be repaid by sending Shyima to work for them in the U.S. A friend posed as her father, and the U.S. embassy in Cairo issued her a six-month tourist visa. Continue >>
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This is sad. I would hope our US officials are cracking down on this abominable practice in the US. I would encourage those who are outraged by this to remember your basis in scripture. This is a sin and we're all sinners. Let's not judge those sinning but put our trust in the Lord that He will judge and His will be done in this matter. In the meantime, get on your knees and fervently pray that those proliferating this sordid practice would come to know the saving power of Jesus Christ!
quetzal wrote: "Where is the outrage? The quotes from Scripture?"
OUTRAGE!
2 Peter 3:7&9
But the present heavens and earth by His Word are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgement and the destruction of ungodly men.
The Lord is not slow about His promises...but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.
Child Maid Trafficking - The product of sin sick souls not only of the parent(s) who sell their young daughters but the people who buy them. The child, the parents, and the slave owners need Jesus.
"Where is the outrage? The quotes from Scripture?"
We tend to limit our posting time to subjects where someone is thinking sin is OK. Do you think this is OK?
quetzal, Tallguy and I are pro-lifers!
Where are all the comments from the pro-lifers? This situation is horrific. Living, breathing children are being abused physically, psychologically, sexually, spiritually. Where is the outrage? The quotes from Scripture? It seems that their Christian concerns stop once the child is actually born.
I agree with you Tallguy.
this is sad and disgusting