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Indigenous & Latina Women & Children's Human
Rights News from the Americas |
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Latina Women & Children at Risk |
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The True Story of the
Sexual Exploitation
with Impunity of Latina
Immigrant Women and Children in
Washington, DC and its
Maryland and Virginia
Suburbs
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This
Section Last Updated: May 3, 2008 |
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A Focus on Washington, DC and
Montgomery County, Maryland
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A
crisis of rape with impunity and sexual slavery severely impacts the
lives of Latin American immigrant women and girls in Greater Washington,
DC |
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This
section of
LibertadLatina.org
contains information
regarding the exploitation and
abuse of Latina immigrant women and children in
the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC and
within the greater Washington, DC region.
These factual materials document
a human rights crisis that has
in the past been hidden from
public view by a combination of
anti-immigrant apathy and
hostility and by a code of
silence within the affected
Latino communities. The
most dire result of this
disturbing pattern of reactions
has been that Latin women,
children and men victims of
criminal abuse and civil law
violations have often been
ignored, underserved and
at-times they have been openly
intimidated by government
institutions that their taxes
pay for, institutions that
should defend them!
From the author's experiences in participating
in and hearing first, second and third person
case histories in this region for 24 years,
including over 65 case stories and taking 6
Latina cases before the local U.S. Equal
Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC)
processor (now called the Montgomery County
Human Rights Office) and one Latina case
intervention before criminal court as a lay
advocate, it is clear that a problem exists.
Latina immigrant women and girls continue to be
sexually exploited largely because local
government agencies do not respond to this
crisis, and the perpetrators of criminal abuses
and civil sexual harassment law violations see
this and know that they can continue with
impunity. Other advocates (see social
worker's letter below) have come to the same
conclusion.
The children, women and men
victims of this illegal
exploitation deserve equal
protection under the law!
Let us all work together to make
that dream a reality soon!
Chuck Goolsby, September, 2003
- LibertadLatina
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The
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Labor
Slavery
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Sexual
Exploitation
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The
victimization
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Latina
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The Rape
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Latinas
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Youth
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Before
LibertadLatina,
Chuck
Goolsby's
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Newsletter
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Discrimination
in
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About
the
Montgomery
County,
Maryland
Commission
for
Women
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Federal
Immigration
Reform
and
Latina
Human
Rights
Links:
U.S.
Community
Exploitation
for coverage
of community
exploitation
issues
within the
U.S.
U.S.
Workplace
Exploitation
for
coverage
of
workplace
exploitation
issues
across the
United
States
All of our reports and
commentaries: 1994 to present
More
about / Mas
sobre
Chuck Goolsby
and
LibertadLatina.org
"I
stand with other men who have made a decision that enough is enough, and
have decided that the brutal men who act with impunity, subjecting women
and children to kidnapping, rape, torture, domestic violence, murder and
sex trafficking with impunity will not continue to get away with it. We
will stand up and take these guys on and defend the
innocent. Our grandmothers, living and gone, our mothers, our sisters and
daughters deserve more than the sexist apathy that currently plagues
many male attitudes about these severe forms of gender oppression..."
- Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
Dec. 10,
2005 |
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During 1999 and 2000, previous to starting the
LibertadLatina.org
project,
Chuck Goolsby provided an e-mail based newsletter of
important community issues related to the right of
Latina women and children to live free from sexual
harassment, rape and enslavement.
Here is text from one
example...
Detailed
information
on Latin
Women
Worker/Harassment
& Other
Exploitation
Issues
(A copy of this e-mail was sent to the U.S. Justice Department, Civil
Rights Division on 12/02/1999.)
Excerpt...
E-Mail
Date: 12/02/99 10:04:28
Hello friends of human rights,
I wanted to present some background on the issue of sexual harassment
and the particular dynamics involved when the victims are Latin-American
Women and Girls.
At the local level, especially in Montgomery County, anti-immigrant and
anti-Latino sentiment blocks police, human relations commission and
social services staff from doing anything about these abuses.
I have documented over 50 cases since 1986, just from my
exposure to Latino workers in corporate and government office buildings
as I move around doing computer work.
This problem exists at severe levels in virtually every office
building, restaurant and hotel in the Washington, DC area.
The victim and potential victim community represent a form of
'underclass' who literally may be harassed, coerced, touched and raped,
while the perpetrators, be they Latino, White or Black, or foreign born
business owners and managers of other ethnicity's... can operate with
confidence that the victim community is too scared, and too pressured
socially (to keep
quiet) to cause any trouble for these criminal perpetrators.
As you likely know, Latino immigrants are afraid of government in
general, afraid of the police, and are afraid of bosses on the job.
They are forced to work harder than "Americans" who know their
rights, and they are used to the exploitation.
I hear this from Central American immigrants almost every time I meet
someone.
In fact I heard it yesterday in a building I just started working
in.
In addition to sexual harassment and assault, illegal retaliatory
reprimands and firings occur, wages are withheld (CASA of Maryland, in
Takoma Park [Maryland], has a list of over 400 Washington, DC area cases
documented where Latino workers have not been paid by employers),
workers are sometimes actually physically beaten by managers, and other
such outrages occur.
These events are normal in much of Latin America.
And government agencies, employers, human rights activists and community leaders have done virtually NOTHING to prevent or
respond to these issues.
Getting victims to come forward is going to require some intervention
from advocates like us.
In the past, very few victims have been willing to go through the
tedious, long duration hassle that bringing a case involves.
And those who have gone through the process have been virtually
spit upon time and again by the legal system.
I know this first hand because I've been there as de-facto legal
assistant and interpreter and negotiator many, many times.
The system will not listen to these victims...
- Chuck Goolsby
Dec. 02,
1999
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An Overview
Latina prostitution slavery exists
in almost every neighborhood in greater
Washington.
It
is well-known that many of
the women and girls involved are forced to
work against their will, and that the
traffickers transport in new groups of them to each
apartment-based brothel every two weeks from New York City,
New Jersey, Atlanta, and other major
prostitution markets.
Another source of women in
prostitution involves local Latina women and
girls who are subjected to severe sexual
harassment and rape by gang members and other
men. Some of these victims are pressured
into participating in prostitution, and others
actively choose what local Central American
Latinas call: "La vide facil" (the easy life).
Additional
Analysis

LibertadLatina's
Analysis of
the
Impunity and
Prostitution
in Langley
Park, MD,
Where
Brothels
Earn Many
Tens of
Thousands of
Dollars
Weekly.
Shut Down
Langley
Park's
Mega-Brothels!
Prostitution dynamics in the Langley Park Latin American immigrant
community
Excerpt #1...
In working class
barrios around Washington, DC such as Langley Park, prostitution
operations are commonplace. It is 'traditional' for many men to
‘use’ adult and underage prostitutes in Latin America, and especially in
Mexico and Central America where most Langley Park immigrants came from.
As an example, one Salvadoran friend, now an evangelical lay pastor,
told me that his father took him to a brothel to be with three
prostitutes, when he was 12 years old.
The fact that
these communities are also gender imbalanced, with many more men than
women being present, creates a large-scale demand for prostitution.
The exploding
criminal industry of sex trafficking provides the 'supply' - women and
underage girls, that the market demands. In this case, criminal
sex trafficking networks from Mexico, Los Angeles and New York City have
for years saturated the Washington, DC region with adult and underage
prostitutes working against their will. A 1994 Washington Post
story describes how such networks rotate prostitutes in and out of the
Washington, DC region from New York City. That pattern continues
to exist 11 years later in 2005.
In 2003 I had a
conversation with a local Latino personality who frequented Latin
American immigrant brothels in both Washington, DC and in the suburban
city of Gaithersburg, Maryland. He described the fact that young
women from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Central America were
sent to Gaithersburg from New York City. The trafficking networks
involved ‘rotated’ these women out every two weeks. The source
noted that these women had told him that they were being ‘exploited’
[forced into prostitution].
During a Spring,
2005 trip to New York City to speak to the group Latinas United for Justice
at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a Latina student who
formerly worked as a cabbie related to me how cab customers all over New
York constantly asked to be taken to the Latin American immigrant
brothels that she noted are “everywhere” in New York. The student
stated that all of the cabbies know about these brothels, and she knew
that the women ‘working’ in them were working against their will.
This New York source of women in prostitution slavery supplies at least
part of the demand for prostitutes in the greater Washington, DC region.
In addition to
forced prostitution, thousands of women and girls in the Latin American
immigrant communities of the greater Washington, DC region engage in
prostitution of their ‘own free will’ (arguably). It is perhaps
more accurate to state that women and teenage girls are forced to engage
in prostitution because:
·
They have grown up in sexist cultures where intimacy was
forced upon them as children, youth or young adults.
(An estimated 80% of child prostitutes in
many Latin American nations were sexually abused
at home before fleeing into a life of street
prostitution.)
·
A
'machismo' based environment instilled in them the concept that their intimacy
is a commodity, that is meant to be sold;
·
They
live in immigrant communities where they are constantly barraged with
unwanted, severe sexual harassment, and are propositioned on a daily
basis; something that some women and underage girls 'give in to.'
·
The
expansion of extremely violent Latin American immigrant gangs into
Langley Park and other communities in the region are creating
environments where women and underage girls are being subjected: to rape
with impunity; severe sexual harassment; pressure to join gangs, leading
to a gang-rape initiation; forced prostitution and coercive pressure on
women and girls to work in prostitution.
·
Immigrant women and girls who complain to the police, and want to press
charges for various levels of sexual assault and other forms of physical
aggression are often turned away by the indifference, anti-immigrant
hostility or bureaucratic rules of the law enforcement community.
·
Strictly enforced rules bar undocumented women and teens
(and especially mothers) from receiving public assistance, forcing them
into prostitution as their only means of survival.
This
factor is a critical point to understand during times of recession in
the United States. Thousands of Latina women literally face a
life without income due to a poor economy and increased
immigration enforcement! How can they and their children survive?
- Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
Aug. 16, 2005
LibertadLatina
Commentary
Undocumented Women and Girls Who Are Caught
Between Increasing
Immigration Law Enforcement And Recession Face
Sexual Exploitation
Prostitution, quid-pro-quo work arrangements
and non-reporting of rape result from a bad
economy and tougher federal, state and local
immigration enforcement.
...Ms.
undocumented Latina finds herself with no
relief from
comprehensive immigration reform,
no green
card, no work permit, no job (especially in this recession), little understanding of
the details of federal, state and local laws, no protection from crime,
protection
that should be provided by police
forces that today may arrest and deport her, no way to feed herself and her children,
and no access to the social services that could help
to alleviate those desperate circumstances.
In that situation, Ms. Latina
will not report rape to police. She will not say "no!" to a
potential or current employer who says (in violation of the law) that
sex is the price she must pay for employment, and she may not say
"no!" to
a pimp or sex trafficker who offers her 'la vida facil' (the easy
life) as a prostitute.
If she goes home to Bolivia, Peru,
Nicaragua, Colombia, Mexico or the Dominican Republic, she will face
exactly the same conditions of life, except for the fact that she will
not be able to support her family...
- Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
Mar 29, 2008
Shut Down
Langley
Park's
Mega-Brothels!
Prostitution dynamics in the Langley Park Latin American immigrant
community
Excerpt #2...
Mega-Brothels in Langley Park, Maryland
In 2004 a U.S.
federal law enforcement official informed me that, much to his surprise,
a Latin American immigrant brothel operation existed in Langley Park
that was raking in $60,000 per week. The agent stated that such
sums of money are usually earned only through large-scale illegal drug
operations.
At perhaps $30.00
per act of prostitution, the above figure breaks down to an estimated
2,000 acts of prostitution per week. That is the volume that just
one of perhaps several Latin American immigrant prostitution operations
is earning.
The agent had
called seeking resources for women victims of these brothel operations
who wanted to leave prostitution. I referred the caller to
Washington, DC's principal non-profit working in direct intervention for
the rescued victims of trafficking.
Given that Latino
prostitution operations are typically run by gangs, it would not be
surprising to find additional prostitution networks operating in Langley
Park on a large scale.
Do they transport
Puerto Rican, Dominican and Salvadoran women en-mass to and from New
York City, as brothel operations in nearby Gaithersburg, Maryland do?
Do they transport Mexican and Central American women en-mass to Langley
Park from Los Angeles, California, by way of gang connections there?
These are
questions that only U.S. law enforcement authorities are capable of
answering for the public.
Regardless of the
origins of the women and girls trapped in prostitution in Langley Park,
federal, state and local law enforcement have an obligation under both
criminal and moral law, to act to shut down these criminal enterprises
and rescue this large community of victims from prostitution.
A year after
being told of this giant Latina 'rape-factory' in Langley Park by a
federal agent, I have yet to see a news report or a prosecutor's
announcement stating that this major criminal enterprise has been shut
down, the victims have been rescued and the perpetrators have been given
a date to see a judge.
Federal
government officials in the current administration often talk about the
need to rescue and restore trafficking victims. Well, here, just
10 miles directly north of the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, is a good place to
start...
- Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
Aug. 16, 2005
Additional
Sex
Trafficking News and
Analysis
from the
Washington,
DC Region
Added April 30, 2008
Washington, DC USA

Ricky Martin at the
April 29th Inter-
American Develop-
ment Bank (IADB)
event kicking-off the
"CALL AND LIVE"
campaign in
Washington, DC
El cantante Ricky Martin ha
decidido extender su lucha contra el tráfico de
personas a Estados Unidos, donde se calcula que hay
unas 20 mil personas [nuevas cada año] que son
retenidas o han sido desplazadas contra su voluntad.
El artista, que
desarrolla esta labor a través de la Ricky Martin
Foundation (RMF) , presentó hoy en Washington la
campaña "Llama y Vive"...
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