The Global Sociology Blog

Here’s to people getting their comeuppance. Enslaving others is one of the most heinous crimes that I can think of. Via the BBC:

"A wealthy New York woman has been sentenced to 11 years in jail for keeping two Indonesian women as slaves. Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, 46, and her husband Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, kept them as slaves and abused them physically and psychologically. The couple had been found guilty on 12 charges in December, including involuntary servitude, harbouring aliens and forced labour.

Mr Sabhnani is to be sentenced later on Friday and may get a shorter term.

In addition to prison, his Indian-born wife was fined $25,000 (£12,600).

"I just want to say that I love my children very much," she told the federal court in Central Islip, on New York state’s Long Island, as two of her grown children looked on.

"I was brought to this earth to help people who are in need."

Her husband wept as his wife’s sentence was announced."

Aww, that is just so sad… until one discovers what they actually did to the women they brought in as housekeepers:

"The wealthy couple, who run a perfume business and have four children, had brought the women to their large house to work as housekeepers, and forced them to work up to 18 hours a day. The couple were arrested after one of the women was found wandering the streets dressed in only trousers and a towel. (…)

[Prosecutors] described how the two Indonesian women had been punished for misbehaviour such as sleeping late and stealing food from the dustbin to supplement their meagre meals.

The women said they had been beaten with brooms and umbrellas, slashed with knives, made to take freezing showers and climb stairs repeatedly.

One said she had been forced to eat several hot chillies and then her own vomit.

US District Judge Arthur Spatt called the testimony "eye-opening, to say the least – that things like that go on in our country".

He postponed a decision on the amount of back pay owed to the two women. Prosecutors have suggested they were due more than $1.1m.

Lawyers for the accused had argued that the housekeepers practised witchcraft and may have abused themselves."

Oh sure. Please, give me a break. Actually, this description of slavery in the housekeeping business is fairly typical. I guess slaveholders lack imagination when it comes to mistreating their slaves. Anyone familiar with Kevin Bales’s books and work would recognize all the "symptoms" of this situation. It is clearly modern slavery.

The worst part of it is that these people are wealthy. They could perfectly afford to pay market wages for housekeepers and nannies and whatever other services they need. Of course, that would mean having to treat their employees according to the labor codes of this country… which I guess is an inconvenience, better to have slaves.

As always, shameless plug to Free The Slaves. And as Kevin Bales himself stated in the comments of a previous post:

"One of the interesting things about people in slavery is how much they really want a chance to work for themselves and, though it may sound strange to people in the rich North, to become consumers. It is just that for them consumption means three meals a day instead of one, school for their kids, and a chance to live without constant fear. Slavery is a horrible violation of human rights, but once people are out of slavery they really need a chance to build up that minimum of income for a decent life, a chance to learn, and a chance to become citizens. Remarkably the average cost of helping someone in slavery to achieve that level of human dignity is only about $400 – or about $11 billion to end slavery forever – a tiny tiny fraction of the wealth you describe in your post.

For more about how we will end slavery and how much it will cost, see my book Ending Slavery: How We Free Today’s Slaves. "

Let me add that all proceeds go to helping slaves.

Also check out the videos at Free The Slaves’s Youtube Channel.