Pines couple charged with enslaving teen after smuggling her into U.S.

[seemslikeadream]

sun-sentinel.com
Posted March 23 2004, 2:15 PM EST

FORT LAUDERDALE – A federal grand jury on Tuesday returned an indictment alleging a Pembroke Pines couple snuck a teenage girl into the country from her native Haiti, then held her in virtual slavery for three years.

The child broke the chain of alleged sexual and economic abuse in 1999 when she told her schoolteacher that she was being sexually abused by a member of the household.

The indictment charges Willie and wife Marie Pompee with harboring a young Haitian girl in their South Florida home. If convicted as charged, the Pompees each face a prison term of up to 10 years and a fine of up to $250,000, plus restitution to the victim.

According to the indictment, the Pompees concealed the child from 1996 until 1999, when the child, then 12, was removed from the Pompee home by local police. The couple used the child as a household servant after she was smuggled into the United States from Haiti, where she and her mother had performed similar work for Marie Pompee's mother and sister, the indictment alleges.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-323pinesslavery,0,6118311.story?coll=sfla-news-broward

[NashVegas]

1. Bush's "Ownership Society"

there ya go!

[mmm]

2. 10 years prison time is not long enough, not even close

[theHandpuppet]

14. Perhaps...

... if the couple had torched a couple of Humvees rather than enslaved and sexually abused a child, they would have received a harsher sentence. But that might send a message that the poor and rich receive equal measures of justice in our democracy, wouldn't it. Destroying the plaything of the rich is ever so more horrid and worthy of punishment than destroying the life of a poor child, especially if the child isn't a nice white child from 'burban Amerika.

Yep, I'm feeling really cynical about justice in the "homeland".

[bicentennial_baby]

3. Not uncommon

I heard an absolutely chilling report on NPR a few months back about child/teen slavery in the U.S. Fucking horrifying.

[seemslikeadream]

4. Haiti's Dark Secret: The Restavecs

Josiméne, 10, and photojournalist Gigi Cohen.
Credit: Gigi Cohen
© 2004

March 20, 2004 -- Freelance producer Rachel Leventhal presents the moving story of one of Haiti's estimated 300,000 restavecs -- young children from the rural countryside literally sold to work for families in the poverty-stricken nation's urban areas.

Josiméne, 10, is a live-in maid in a two-room house outside of Port-au-Prince. Her parents are small farmers in Haiti's remote and mountainous heartland.

Among other duties, Josiméne cares for two younger children, cleans the house, washes dishes, scrubs laundry by hand, runs errands and sells small items from the family's informal store.

As part of the Child Poverty Photo Project, photojournalist Gigi Cohen briefly got to know Josiméne. In the course of her work, Cohen heard about the life the young girl lives as a servant and the life she left behind.

http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1779562

[Judi Lynn]

5. This is so hideous, for two reasons

First, that there are NO safeguards to keep this from happening in the first place in a country as organized and enlightened as ours imagines itself.

Second, _{George Bush} hurled charges last year at several countries, accusing them of "human trafficking," and it was discussed here then.

From the article:

Trafficking in people - also known as human trafficking - is a form of modern-day slavery, according to federal immigration officials and the FBI. Recent government estimates indicate 18,000 to 20,000 persons are brought into the United States annually for the purposes of sexual exploitation or forced labor.
(snip)

Un-bleeping believable. Yet, _{the pResident} continues to point his soft, moist, squishy fingers at any number of other countries. Takes all kinds.

[DiverDave]

6. I'll bet $50 they vote repuke.

anybody want some of this action?

Absolutely despicable, they should rot in prison, but not in the fascist state of Florida.

[They_LIHOP]

7. Lets not forget the Bill of Rights here...

Assuming that the ALLEGATIONS of sexual abuse are true, then this is obviously quite distasteful, to put it mildly.

However, I guarantee there are literally 100's of millions of children around the world that would LOVE to come to America and work for a family, live in their home, even for pennies a day. It sounds as though the two families have a long history, and these folks may well have simply brought the girl over in hopes of giving her a real chance at life. Remember, she lived in friggin HAITI, now she lives in the USA, with a domestic servant-type job. Her life here might well be infinitely better than it was before.

Before we jump all over this family and simply assume that one or both was sexually abusing this girl, why don't we wait and see what the courts have to say? There are programs in place to protect and even give asylum and I believe even citizenship to people who are 'trafficked', and the sexual abuse allegation is a perfect way to get yourself protected thusly by our government. Not to mention to 'get back' at people who maybe have made you angry somehow.

I'm not going to jump down this couple's throat until I see a bit more evidence, thats all I'm saying...

[w4rma]

8. Slavery was abolished after the Civil War. (nt)

[Judi Lynn]

10. Why do you imagine this was mentioned in the story?

Both Willie Pompee Sr. and his eldest son fled the country in 1999 after the child was removed from their Pembroke Pines home.

Do you think they actually went on a spontaneous vacation which was misunderstood as fleeing prosecution?

[Oilwellian]

11. So let me get this straight....

you're saying, if she wasn't sexually abused, it's much more acceptable that they smuggled the little girl into this country for the sole purpose of having her as a servant in their home? What about her right to a childhood, or an education or you know, a freaking LIFE??? Are you sure you've joined the right forum here? Something tells me you're going to be eaten alive!

[silverpatronus]

15. i beg your pardon...

but are you for real? whether you believe that the sexual abuse allegations are true or not, you AGREE that it's ok that this MINOR is a) working domestically and b) not being paid for it, because 'this is america and it's better'?

i cannot believe you...

[seemslikeadream]

9. Of Haitian Bondage

Friday, May 4, 2001, Time Magazine, TIM PADGETT/MIAMI AND PORT-AU-PRINCE


By the late 1990s, Haitian-American community activists like Romer had begun to detect the presence of restaveks in Miami. When the activists began to broach the issue on Haitian radio shows and at church gatherings, they first faced denial and even veiled threats of ostracism from some of the community's old guard. But the phenomenon could no longer be covered up after Oct. 2, 1999, when Florida officials working on a tip from neighbors removed a 12-year-old Haitian girl--filthy, unkempt and in acute abdominal pain from repeated rape--from the affluent suburban home of middle-class Haitian-American merchants Willy and Marie Pompee in Pembroke Pines. The girl, a restavek, said she had been forced to have sex with the Pompees' 20-year-old son Willy Jr. since she was nine. The father and son, who police say are on the lam in Haiti, have been charged with slaveholding and sexual battery, respectively. Marie, who would not take repeated phone requests for comment, remains under investigation.

It is impossible to estimate how many others like the Pembroke Pines girl, nicknamed Little Hope in the Haitian community, are laboring in American households. But Romer and other Haitian- American social workers report that current and former restaveks are coming to them in greater numbers now for help, largely because the Pembroke Pines case galvanized support for such victims. Several organizations have set up hotlines for kids seeking help; they offer ex-restaveks assistance in finding homes, jobs and opportunities for schooling.
http://www.racematters.org/ofhaitianbondage.htm

[seemslikeadream]

12. Pines couple charged with enslaving Haitian girl after smuggling her into

The case came to light when the girl befriended three employees of a Fort Lauderdale modeling school after responding to a television ad for the school. During daily calls, details of the girl's life slowly emerged.

She said although she shared the house with the Pompees and their four children, she slept on the floor and was forced to clean the house from the moment she returned home from school until she went to bed. She said she was not allowed to have any personal possessions and was hardly fed. Then, as she held her abdomen in pain, details of the alleged sexual abuse came out.


The U.S. Attorney's Office said human trafficking is a modern form of slavery. According to recent government estimates, as many as 20,000 people a year are brought into the United States for forced labor or sexual exploitation.

Child slavery is an entrenched tradition in Haiti where, according to some estimates, there are as many as 300,000 child slaves, called restaveks. Restavek means "to stay with" in Creole, and children on the impoverished island sometimes are referred to as "animals."

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-censlave24mar24,0,4127998.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

[seemslikeadream]

13. 12-year-old girl on hit list for giving Aristide flowers

One of Haiti's 400,000 restaveks (unpaid domestic servants) is in hiding in Northern Haiti. Death squads targeted her after they looted her school, where they found a photograph of her giving flowers to President Aristide. The girl, whose name has been withheld for her own safety, is 12 years old. Her story was read Monday on Flashpoints, the investigative news show broadcast weekdays at 5 p.m. on KPFA 94.1 FM.

It is the words of Aristide that freed me, and it is the words about Aristide that condemn me.

My mother died when I was a child, and my father sent me to live with a family in Cap Haitian. I was four years old. Every day I got up and I washed the floor. I hauled water on my head. I went to the market and bought food and charcoal. I cooked the food and I washed the clothes. I did work all day and my back hurt.

I felt that I was not a person, just a zombie walking around asleep. I was not allowed to eat at the table or sleep in a bed. Instead I ate whatever food was left when others were finished. I slept under the table with the dogs. I was not yet alive. I had not been born.

President Aristide spoke about the restaveks on the radio, and he said, “All the restaveks are people.” I did not know who he was, so it made me laugh because I thought he must be a fool to think I was a person and to say that the restaveks are the future of Haiti.

http://www.sfbayview.com/031004/onhitlist031004.shtml