X-Mas

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Nobel winner Harold Pinter dies at 78

• Story Highlights
• Harold Pinter died on Christmas Eve, his wife tells British media
• Pinter, 78, had been suffering from cancer
• He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005

(CNN) -- Harold Pinter, the Nobel Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter whose absurdist and realistic works displayed a despair and defiance about the human condition, has died, according to British media reports. He was 78.

Pinter's wife, Lady Antonia Fraser, confirmed his death.

Pinter, who had been suffering from cancer, died on Christmas Eve, according to the reports.

Fraser told the Guardian newspaper: "He was a great, and it was a privilege to live with him for over 33 years. He will never be forgotten."

Pinter was known for such plays as "The Birthday Party" (1957), "The Homecoming" (1964), "No Man's Land" (1974), "Mountain Language" (1988), and "Celebration" (2000). The works caught a linguistic rhythm -- the legendary "Pinter pause" -- and an air of social unease that resonated throughout the English-speaking world and in myriad translations.

His movie credits, like his plays, span the decades and include "The Quiller Memorandum" (1965) and "The French Lieutenant's Woman" (1981).

Pinter also wrote the screenplay for his 1978 play "Betrayal," the story of a doomed love affair told backward, which was made into a 1983 film with Ben Kingsley, Jeremy Irons and Patricia Hodge.

He received the Nobel Prize in literature in 2005.

Pinter's later plays were more overtly political, with works such as "One for the Road" (1984) and "The New World Order" (1991) focusing on state torture.

In commentaries, he became a blistering critic of the United States, writing in his Nobel lecture that the country "quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain."

But Pinter could also be a man of great humor. In 2006, he recounted a story about a fall that had landed him in the hospital a year earlier.

"Two days later, I woke up to find that I'd been given the Nobel Prize in literature," he said. "So life is really full of ups and downs, you see."

Harold Pinter was born in London on October 10, 1930. He was the son of Jewish immigrants, his father a dressmaker, his mother "a wonderful cook," he once recalled. In 1948 he was accepted into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, then as now one of Great Britain's most renowned drama schools. But the RADA didn't take; Pinter hated the school and dropped out after two terms.

He became an actor and turned to playwriting with his first work, "The Room," in 1957. Later that year he wrote "The Birthday Party," a "comedy of menace," in the words of one critic, that helped make Pinter's reputation -- though, in an irony he could appreciate, after it closed in London due to scathing notices.

Ensuing Pinter plays, including "The Dumb Waiter" (1957) and "The Homecoming," made him Britain's most famous playwright, as influential to "late 20th-century British theater [as] Tennessee Williams is to mid-century American stages," CNN.com's Porter Anderson wrote in 2006.

"What's generally meant as a 'Pinter play' in the purest sense usually revolves around one or more characters who are imposing on themselves a constricted, even deprived existence in order to hold off a presumed but uncertain threat," Anderson wrote.

Pinter's plays featured sparse dialogue, often spiced with paranoia or simple befuddlement. In "The Birthday Party," a boardinghouse resident is accosted by two malevolent visitors who insist it's his birthday; in "The Homecoming" -- which won the Tony Award for best play when it premiered on Broadway in 1967 -- a professor and his wife return to his working-class British family, where the wife becomes the center of attention.

Pinter credited Samuel Beckett, among others, as an influence. (He starred in a production of Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape" in 2006.) In turn, writers such as David Mamet and Sam Shepard followed Pinter's elliptical lead.

"One way of looking at speech is to say it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness," Pinter once said.

He was married first to the actress Vivien Merchant. Following a 1980 divorce, Pinter married writer-historian Lady Antonia Fraser.

N.Y. home raided after patients were allegedly given wine as painkiller

PEEKSKILL, New York - A man has been accused of operating an illegal dentist's office in the kitchen of his suburban New York City home and giving patients wine from a jug to help them cope with the pain.

Police arrested Carlos Flores on Tuesday night after raiding his home in Peekskill, about 45 miles north of midtown Manhattan. They say they learned about the dental office when a man who went there for a toothache ended up hospitalized after Flores broke the tooth while trying to pull it out.

Police say Flores treated poor Hispanics. They say they seized a dentist's chair, drugs and bloodstained orthodontic equipment from his kitchen.

Flores has been charged with practicing dentistry without a license. He says he was a licensed orthodontist in his native Ecuador.

Bush revokes pardon issued a day earlier

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush took the very rare step Wednesday of revoking a pardon he had granted only a day before, after learning in news reports of political contributions to Republicans by the man's father and other information.

Bush pardoned 19 people on Tuesday, including Isaac Robert Toussie of Brooklyn, N.Y., who had been convicted of making false statements to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and of mail fraud. On Wednesday, the White House issued an extraordinary statement saying the president was reversing his decision in Toussie's case.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said the new decision was "based on information that has subsequently come to light," including on the extent and nature of Toussie's prior criminal offenses. She also said that neither the White House counsel's office nor the president had been aware of a political contribution by Toussie's father that "might create an appearance of impropriety."

"Given that, this was the prudent thing to do," she said.

The new information came to the White House's attention from news reports, Perino said.

A story in the New York Daily News said Toussie's father, Robert, donated $28,500 to the national Republican Party in April. It came just months before Toussie's pardon petition, the newspaper said.

Outside of the process
The counsel's office generally doesn't include vetting of political contributions in its reviews on such matters, as that would be "highly inappropriate on many levels," she said. The White House decision on Toussie had come without a recommendation from the pardon attorney, Ronald L. Rodgers, as Toussie's request for a pardon came less than five years after completion of his sentence, so that eliminated another step in the review process.

The Justice Department advises the president on who qualifies for pardons. Only people who have waited five years after their conviction or release from prison can apply for a pardon under the department's guidelines. Criminals are required to begin serving time, or otherwise exhaust any appeals, before they can be considered for sentence commutation.

But the president can forgive people outside that process if he chooses. Under the Constitution, the president's power to issue pardons is absolute and cannot be overruled — meaning he can forgive anyone he wants, at any time.

 

Perino said she is not aware of any other instance of a pardon reversal, in the Bush administration or others.

"The counsel to the president reviewed the application and believed, based on the information known to him at the time, that it was a meritorious application," she said. Bush now believes the case should rest with the pardon attorney.

The Daily News story on Wednesday, and another in Newsday and on blogs, shed light on Toussie's record. He pleaded guilty for lying to HUD and mail fraud, admitting that he falsified finances of prospective homebuyers seeking HUD mortgages. He was sentenced to five months in prison and five months' house arrest, a $10,000 fine and no restitution, the Daily News reported.

 

In another case, Toussie pleaded guilty to having a friend send his local county a letter that falsely inflated property values.

The Daily News also located a lawyer representing hundreds of ex-customers who have sued Toussie in federal court, accusing him of luring poor, minority homebuyers into buying overpriced homes with mortgages that had hidden costs.

Federal Election Commission records show a number of donations to Republicans this year by Robert Toussie and by a Laura Toussie who lists the same address. Between them, they gave $4,600 to Minnesota GOP Sen. Norm Coleman and another $4,600 to Oregon Republican Sen. Gordon Smith, all on Oct. 15. Coleman is locked in a still-undecided race against Democrat Al Franken, and Smith lost in November to Democrat Jeff Merkley.

On Oct. 30, Robert Toussie also gave $2,300 to GOP Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia.

His contribution to the Republican National Committee came as part of a fundraiser in March for GOP presidential candidate John McCain. Out of a total donation of $30,800 by Toussie, $2,300 went to McCain's campaign and $28,500 went to the RNC.

 

Unprecedented reversal
Doug Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University and a close follower of presidential clemency decisions, said the White House decision strikes him as unprecedented, but he said it's not inconceivable that it had happened in the past.

"It's, at best, embarrassing. At worst, it's an extraordinary example of this White House's ability to bollox up one bit of presidential authority that he clearly has," Berman said.

Bradford Berenson, an associate White House counsel during Bush's first term and Isaac Toussie's lawyer, said in a statement that his client remained confident the pardon attorney would grant his request.

"Isaac Toussie is deeply grateful that both the counsel to the president and the president himself found Mr. Toussie's pardon application to have sufficient merit to be granted," Berenson said. "Mr. Toussie looks forward to the pardon attorney's expeditious review of the application."

Berenson declined to elaborate further on the case and its developments.

With the Toussie reversal, Bush has granted a total of 189 pardons and nine commutations. That's fewer than half as many as Presidents Clinton or Reagan issued during their two-term tenures.

"At Christmas play and make good cheer,
For Christmas comes but once a year." - Thomas Tusser

Wednesday 12-24-08

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Investor who lost $1.4B to Madoff kills himself

Dec 24 02:22 AM US/Eastern By ADAM GOLDMAN Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - He was a distinguished investor who traced his lineage to the French aristocracy, hobnobbed with members of European high society and sailed around the world on fancy yachts. But after losing more than $1 billion of his clients' money to Bernard Madoff, Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet had enough. He locked the door of his Madison Avenue office and apparently swallowed sleeping pills and slashed his wrists with a box cutter, police said. A security guard found his body Tuesday morning, next to a garbage can placed to catch the blood. The bloody scene marked a grisly turn in the Madoff scandal in which money managers and investors were ensnared in an alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme. De la Villehuchet is believed to have lost about $1.4 billion to Madoff. No suicide note was found, said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne. De la Villehuchet, 65, was an esteemed financier who tapped his upper-crust European connections to attract clients. It was not immediately clear how he knew Madoff or who his clients were. He grew increasingly subdued after the Madoff scandal broke, drawing suspicion among janitors at his office Monday night when he demanded that they be out of there by 7 p.m. Less than 13 hours later, his body was found. His death came as swindled investors began looking for ways to recoup their losses. Funds that lost big to Madoff are also facing investor lawsuits and backlash for failing to properly vet Madoff and overlooking red flags that could have steered them away. It's not immediately known what kind of scrutiny de la Villehuchet was facing over his losses. De la Villehuchet (pronounced veel-ou-SHAY) comes from rich French lineage, with the Magon part of his name referring to one of France's most powerful families. The Magon name is even listed on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, a monument commissioned by Napoleon in 1806. "He's irreproachable," said Bill Rapavy, who was Access International's chief operating officer before founding his own firm in 2007. De la Villehuchet's firm enlisted intermediaries with links to wealthy Europeans to garner investors. Among them was Philippe Junot, a French businessman and friend who is the former husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco, and Prince Michel of Yugoslavia. De la Villehuchet, the former chairman and chief executive of Credit Lyonnais Securities USA, was also known as a keen sailor who regularly participated in regattas and was a member of the New York Yacht Club. He lived in an affluent suburb in Westchester County with his wife, Claudine. They have no children. There was no answer Tuesday at the family's two-story house. Phone calls to the home and de la Villehuchet's office went unanswered. Guy Gurney, a British photographer living in Connecticut, was friends with de la Villehuchet. The two often sailed together and competed in a regatta in France in November. "He was a very honorable man," Gurney said. "He was extraordinarily generous. He was an aristocrat but not a snob. He was a real person. When he was sailing, he was one of the boys." The two were supposed to have dinner last Friday but Gurney called the day before to cancel because of the weather. But during the call, de la Villehuchet revealed he had been ensnared in Madoff scandal. "He sounded very subdued," Gurney said. Gurney said de la Villehuchet was happily married to his wife. "I can't imagine what it's like for her now," he said.

$861,513.25 in January mortgage payments won't have to be paid

One bank is playing Santa for 500 lucky homeowners in this season of foreclosures and sinking home values — a gesture paid in part by employees forgoing their annual office party.

ING Direct forgave $861,513.25 in January mortgage payments — or an average $1,700 per household — for the 500 customers who won the online bank's essay contest.

ING Direct cancelled its holiday parties this year, said spokesman Jeff Mirabello, partly offsetting the cost of the contest. He was not unable to provide a specific figure on how much the company usually spends on its holiday gatherings.

There was no staff vote on the decision, but employees weren't upset, said Scott Lugar, head of consumer lending, who administered the program.

A committee within the direct bank and thrift, owned by the Dutch financial services giant ING Groep NV, chose the winners out of nearly 5,500 homeowners who sent in a 250-word essay.

"We said tell us your story," Lugar said.

Not included among the winners are any of the about 250 customers now in the foreclosure process, he said. Rather the winners were those whose stories struck the committee as particularly compelling.

Christine Feterowski of East Bridgewater, Mass., got a phone call on Dec. 5 from ING Direct saying her January mortgage payment of just over $1,500 was being paid for by the bank.

"I started crying," she said. "I told them I was in shock."

She, her husband and 16-year-old son used the money to fly down to Florida for her older son's college graduation. The money comes at a good time for Feterowski, who has been unable to work because she has bladder cancer. She has major surgery scheduled for Jan. 9.

She said her husband planned to take two or three weeks of unpaid leave to care for her.

"It couldn't have come at a better time," she said. "It's been such a struggle for us the last couple months with chemo, saving up money to go down to my son's graduation."

The couple have never been late on a mortgage payment, Feterowski said.

Another winner, Matthew Botos, wrote on his blog that he was a winner of ING Direct's "own little bailout contest."

"I figured they'd get plenty of sob stories and I'm already paying $700 billion to bail out irresponsible borrowers and lenders, so my essay implored them to take a contrarian view and reward a responsible citizen," he wrote.

He posted his winning contest entry, in which he states: "I personally have lived within my financial means, made savings a priority and accepted the necessary sacrifices. My mortgage is still small; my car is old but paid off, and I've eBayed old electronics to fund new toys without ever carrying a credit card balance."

ING Direct also announced in late November that it was suspending evictions through Jan. 15 and halting foreclosure sales through the end of March.

The company said about 250 of its customers have seriously delinquent mortgages — more than 90 days past due — while 1,300 borrowers are 90 days past due on their payments.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance companies, have similar halts on foreclosure sales and evictions in place through Jan. 9.

Of the top 25 lenders in the country, only ING Direct, Fifth Third Bancorp and AmTrust Bank in Ohio have seen increased mortgage activity through September of this year. ING Direct has 1.4 percent of the residential mortgage market in the U.S., according to Inside Mortgage Finance, or mortgage volume of $17.54 billion. ING Direct said it had about 83,000 home-loan customers.

 

In October, the Dutch government granted ING Direct's parent company a 10 billion euro ($14 billion) lifeline to prevent a run on the bank. Several other Dutch banks also got capital injections.

Last week ING Direct held gatherings in its main offices in Wilmington, Del., Saint Cloud, Minn., and Santa Monica, Calif. to read a few winning entries to the company employees who had not gotten holiday parties this year.

In Wilmington, Lugar played a recording of a phone call to a customer.

"There wasn't a dry eye in the place," he said. "This is so much more fulfilling than putting on my monkey suit and drinking wine with my colleagues."

Banks unable or unwilling to disclose how they're spending billions in aid

WASHINGTON - It's something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where's the money going?

But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they can't track exactly how they're spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.

"We've lent some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, 'Here's how we're doing it,'" said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. "We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to."

The Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what's the plan for the rest?

None of the banks provided specific answers.

"We're not providing dollar-in, dollar-out tracking," said Barry Koling, a spokesman for Atlanta, Ga.-based SunTrust Banks Inc., which got $3.5 billion in taxpayer dollars.

Some banks said they simply didn't know where the money was going.

"We manage our capital in its aggregate," said Regions Financial Corp. spokesman Tim Deighton, who said the Birmingham, Ala.-based company is not tracking how it is spending the $3.5 billion it received as part of the financial bailout.

No strings attached
The answers highlight the secrecy surrounding the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which earmarked $700 billion — about the size of the Netherlands' economy — to help rescue the financial industry. The Treasury Department has been using the money to buy stock in U.S. banks, hoping that the sudden inflow of cash will get banks to start lending money.

There has been no accounting of how banks spend that money. Lawmakers summoned bank executives to Capitol Hill last month and implored them to lend the money — not to hoard it or spend it on corporate bonuses, junkets or to buy other banks. But there is no process in place to make sure that's happening and there are no consequences for banks who don't comply.

"It is entirely appropriate for the American people to know how their taxpayer dollars are being spent in private industry," said Elizabeth Warren, the top congressional watchdog overseeing the financial bailout.

But, at least for now, there's no way for taxpayers to find that out.

 

Pressured by the Bush administration to approve the money quickly, Congress attached nearly no strings on the $700 billion bailout in October. And the Treasury Department, which doles out the money, never asked banks how it would be spent.

"Those are legitimate questions that should have been asked on Day One," said Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., a House Financial Services Committee member who opposed the bailout as it was rushed through Congress. "Where is the money going to go to? How is it going to be spent? When are we going to get a record on it?"

 

Nearly every bank AP questioned — including Citibank and Bank of America, two of the largest recipients of bailout money — responded with generic public relations statements explaining that the money was being used to strengthen balance sheets and continue making loans to ease the credit crisis.

A few banks described company-specific programs, such as JPMorgan Chase's plan to lend $5 billion to nonprofit and health care companies next year. Richard Becker, senior vice president of Wisconsin-based Marshall & Ilsley Corp., said the $1.75 billion in bailout money allowed the bank to temporarily stop foreclosing on homes.

But no bank provided even the most basic accounting for the federal money.

"We're choosing not to disclose that," said Kevin Heine, spokesman for Bank of New York Mellon, which received about $3 billion.

Others said the money couldn't be tracked. Bob Denham, a spokesman for North Carolina-based BB&T Corp., said the bailout money "doesn't have its own bucket." But he said taxpayer money wasn't used in the bank's recent purchase of a Florida insurance company. Asked how he could be sure, since the money wasn't being tracked, Denham said the bank would have made that deal regardless.

Others, such as Morgan Stanley spokeswoman Carissa Ramirez, offered to discuss the matter with reporters on condition of anonymity. When AP refused, Ramirez sent an e-mail saying: "We are going to decline to comment on your story."

Why the secrecy?
Most banks wouldn't say why they were keeping the details secret.

"We're not sharing any other details. We're just not at this time," said Wendy Walker, a spokeswoman for Dallas-based Comerica Inc., which received $2.25 billion from the government.

Heine, the New York Mellon Corp. spokesman who said he wouldn't share spending specifics, added: "I just would prefer if you wouldn't say that we're not going to discuss those details."

The banks which came closest to answering the questions were those, such as U.S. Bancorp and Huntington Bancshares Inc., that only recently received the money and have yet to spend it. But neither provided anything more than a generic summary of how the money would be spent.

Lawmakers say they want to tighten restrictions on the remaining, yet-to-be-released $350 billion block of bailout money before more cash is handed out. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the department is trying to step up its monitoring of bank spending.

"What we've been doing here is moving, I think, with lightning speed to put necessary programs in place, to develop them, implement them, and then we need to monitor them while we're doing this," Paulson said at a recent forum in New York. "So we're building this organization as we're going."

 

Warren, the congressional watchdog appointed by Democrats, said her oversight panel will try to force the banks to say where they've spent the money.

"It would take a lot of nerve not to give answers," she said.

But Warren said she's surprised she even has to ask.

"If the appropriate restrictions were put on the money to begin with, if the appropriate transparency was in place, then we wouldn't be in a position where you're trying to call every recipient and get the basic information that should already be in public documents," she said.

Garrett, the New Jersey congressman, said the nation might never get a clear answer on where hundreds of billions of dollars went.

"A year or two ago, when we talked about spending $100 million for a bridge to nowhere, that was considered a scandal," he said.

Shadowy multibillion-dollar industry far more widespread than expected

When FBI and immigration agents arrested a 28-year-old Guatemalan woman three months ago in Los Angeles, they announced that they had shut down one of the most elaborate sex trafficking rings in the country. It was also the family business.

The woman, Maribel Rodriguez Vasquez, was the sixth member of her family to be rounded up in the two-year multi-agency investigation. Vasquez, five of her relatives and three other Guatemalan nationals were charged with 50 counts, alleging that they lured at least a dozen young women — including five minors as young as 13 years old — to the United States with promises of good jobs, only to put them to work as prostitutes. All remain in custody as investigators attempt to unravel the complex case.

Vasquez — quickly dubbed the “L.A. Madam” — attracted attention because she had been featured on the fugitive-hunting television program “America’s Most Wanted.” But it was one of only a few such cases to be spotlighted by national media, contributing to the false impression that cases of immigrant sex trafficking are isolated incidents, law enforcement officials and advocates for immigrants say.

The reality is that human trafficking goes on in nearly every American city and town, said Lisette Arsuaga, director of development for the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking, a human rights organization in Los Angeles.

“Human trafficking is well hidden,” Arsuaga said. “I consider it a huge problem.”

Her assessment is shared by authorities in Bexar County, Texas, where the Sheriff’s Office has formed a task force with Shared Hope International, an anti-slavery organization founded by former Rep. Linda Smith, D-Wash. Bexar County is considered a crossroads of the cross-border Mexican sex slave trade because two Interstate highways that crisscross the state intersect there, some 150 miles from the Mexican border.

“I could go to a truck stop in South Texas right now and get on a CB radio and ask for some sweet stuff, and someone’s going to come out and offer something to sell,” Sheriff’s Deputy Chris Burchell said.

A $9.5 billion-a-year industry
Federal officials agree that the trafficking of human beings as sex slaves is far more prevalent than is popularly understood. While saying it is difficult to pinpoint the scope of the industry, given its shadowy nature, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials estimated that it likely generates more than $9.5 billion a year.

Last year alone, the FBI opened more than 225 human trafficking investigations in the United States. Figures for 2008 are not yet available, but in a coordinated nationwide sweep in July, federal, state and local authorities made more than 640 arrests and rescued 47 children in just three days.

In congressional testimony this year, FBI Director Robert Mueller called sex trafficking “a significant and persistent problem in the U.S. and around the world.”

 

Most cases involve “international persons trafficked to the United States from other countries,” who are generally less aware of their rights, probably do not speak English and are frightened to go to the authorities, he said. “Victims are often lured with false promises of good jobs and better lives and are then forced to work in the sex industry.”

While an increasing number of young men and boys are being forced into the commercial sex industry, more than 80 percent of victims are women and girls, the State Department estimated this year. Of those, 70 percent are forced into prostitution, stripping, pornography or mail-order marriage.

That allegedly was the case with the L.A. Madam.

Prosecutors said in court documents that the Vasquez ring sold Guatemalan women and girls to one another like slaves for several years. Ring members also would try to keep them in line by taking them to witch doctors who threatened to put curses on them and their families if they ran away, the prosecution said.

In one incident, three of the defendants repeatedly kicked and hit one of the victims to punish her for trying to escape, the documents allege.

“These young women were enticed into coming to this country by promises of the American dream, only to arrive and discover that what awaited was a nightmare,” said Robert Schoch, an ICE special agent.

A modern-day form of slavery
Less publicized cases reveal ordeals just as horrific.

In August, three owners and operators of Asian massage parlors in Johnson County, Kansas, near Kansas City, pleaded guilty to human trafficking of women they recruited from China and forced into prostitution.

Charging documents said the defendants, all Chinese nationals, arranged the women’s travel, meeting them at the Kansas City, Mo., airport and driving them directly to one of two massage parlors they operated in Overland Park. There, the women were forced to work from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week performing “sexual services on male patrons in exchange for money.”

Occasionally, one of the women would be sent to a nearby apartment to provide “extended sexual services,” prosecutors said. Otherwise, they lived in the massage parlors, monitored 24 hours a day by surveillance cameras.

The case made it clear that “human trafficking is a modern-day form of slavery that reaches from the other side of the globe to the suburban Midwest,” U.S. Attorney John F. Wood said.

Last month, police in Nashville, Tenn., arrested two men and charged them with holding a young Mexican woman as a sex slave, driving her across Tennessee, Georgia and Florida, where she was forced to engage in prostitution with as many as seven men a day, court records said.

Investigators alleged that the woman, 22, was tortured, stabbed and cut with an ice pick to ensure her obedience. They said the men also threatened to kill her family in Mexico and her sister in Atlanta if she did not follow their orders.

“The account given by this woman is very, very disturbing,” said Don Aaron, a spokesman for the Nashville police.

Beatings, rapes and forced abortions
In New York, meanwhile, Consuelo Carreto Valencia, a 4-foot-10, 61-year-old grandmother, pleaded guilty in July to smuggling dozens of women from Mexico and violently coercing them to perform sex acts.

 

Prosecutors said that Valencia was the matriarch of an extensive prostitution ring based in Mexico. The victims were compelled to perform sex acts 12 hours a day and were subjected to beatings, rape and forced abortions, they said.

Valencia agreed to the guilty plea after her attorney, John S. Wallenstein, told her she could go to prison for life if she were convicted on all counts.

“I said the jurors are going to want to jump out of the jury box and tear you to pieces,” Wallenstein was quoted as saying.

Cases hard to build
But law enforcement officials say that such successes are relatively rare. Often, victims are too frightened to cooperate with investigators, and when they are willing to help, they often speak little or no English, making it problematic to present cases that commonly rest on one person’s word against that of another.

“We have cases come up all the time, but no one really knows about it because Hispanic illegal immigrants fear being deported,” said Sara Sherman, an anti-slavery activist with Free For Life Ministries in Nashville.

Sheriff’s Deputy Keith Bickford, coordinator of the Human Trafficking Task Force in Multnomah County, Ore., said “The girls need help,” but he said they are “so difficult to deal with that we don’t have anyone trained to deal with them.”

Catching ringleaders in the act is particularly difficult, said Minneapolis Deputy Police Chief Valerie Wurster.

“We don’t find people who are chained to beds,” Wurster said. “What we’re finding is people who are very frightened, who don’t have resources locally, being managed by someone who is telling them things that aren’t very true about the environment that they’re living in.”

Federal authorities said that because the victims of sex slavery are captive and cannot come forward, they need more help from the public.

The Justice Department maintains a human trafficking hotline at 1-888-428-7581, but there is a great deal of work left to do, said Carmen Pitre, executive director of the Task Force on Family Violence, an agency that supports victims of trafficking in Milwaukee.

“We’ve come to learn that cases of trafficking are all around us in plain sight,” Pitre said. “Today, you can buy a human being for $200 in any major city in the world.”

Midday 12-22-08 Evening

** until 12-25-08 **

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Monday 12-22-08

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Knowledge is power.

                         - Francis Bacon -

Midday 12-22-08 Evening

** until 12-25-08 **

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