Prosecutors say wealthy residents used slave labor
By: Freeman Klopott
Examiner Staff Writer
July 1, 2009
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| A home in Potomac where federal prosecutors say Soripada Lubis sent at least one of his slave victims to work. (Andrew Harnik/Examiner) |
Some of the Washington area's wealthiest residents hired illegal immigrant women who had been forced into what experts called human slavery by a Falls Church man, federal prosecutors said.
Over the last eight years, Soripada Lubis enticed at least 20 Indonesian women away from the employers who brought them to the United States and farmed the women out as domestic servants to households in Potomac and elsewhere, according to court documents filed in Alexandria's federal court.
Prosecutors say Lubis threatened the women and their families with violence if they disobeyed him, and held their passports so they couldn't flee.
The list of Lubis' 50 clients divulged in court filings by federal prosecutors includes a high-profile Washington attorney, multiple doctors -- among them a high-ranking doctor at a Maryland hospital -- and an engineer who invented an electric backup system for houses that use well water. No charges have been filed against the people who employed the women, and The Examiner has chosen not to release their names.
But prosecutors had tough words for the wealthy area homeowners who used the slave labor. "The various employers are also participants" in Lubis' scheme, prosecutors wrote. "They knew or were willfully blind to the fact that the victims were illegal aliens and that Lubis harbored them."
Lubis' actions amount to what human trafficking experts call modern-day slavery.
"Traffickers take advantage of desperation," said Mark Lagon, director of the Polaris Project and former head of the State Department's human trafficking office. "They take advantage of people in such flagrant ways that it's slavery."
Andrea Powell, director of Fair Fund, an advocacy group for human trafficking victims, said, "People are so desperate to come to the U.S. that they are willing to put up with all kinds of abuse, including slavery."
Several of the 20 women have helped authorities build their case against Lubis, who is expected to be sentenced to up to eight years later this month. His sentencing was originally slated for Wednesday, but was postponed. He has pleaded guilty to harboring illegal immigrants for commercial and financial gain.
At least four of the women have obtained special visas that allow victims of human trafficking to stay in the U.S., authorities said. Those four women still live with the Potomac employers who hired them from Lubis, the employers confirmed. One of the Potomac clients served as Lubis' funnel into the high society, prosecutors wrote in court documents. That woman employed one of Lubis' victims and then referred friends and neighbors to him.
Two of the clients told The Examiner that when Lubis first met with them, he said he had "papers" for the women whose work he was selling. On that premise, the clients said they hired the women who typically lived and worked in their home during the week. Authorities say the victims earned between $250 and $400 a week and worked 12-hour days, at least half of which was taken by Lubis in exchange for living in his Falls Church basement during the weekends. Two of the women have claimed he sexually abused them.
According to prosecutors, at least three of the clients were told by either Lubis or his wife to pay the women in cash only. In at least one case, an employer was told to pay in cash "because the women do not have documents and could not cash a check," prosecutors wrote.
