A Haitian girl in South Florida shows one face of a crime many want the state to fight more vigorously: human trafficking.
By TAMARA LUSH
Published March 29, 2004
Eight years ago, Marie and Willie Pompee plucked a 9-year-old Haitian girl out of poverty and brought her to live in their new, $400,000 home nestled in a gated Broward county community.
But this was no altruistic adoption.
The girl was forced to sleep on the floor and clean the entire house when she wasn't in school, and was repeatedly raped by the couple's son, investigators said.
"She was definitely treated in a slavelike manner," said Pembroke Pines Police Capt. Keith Palant.
Last week, Marie Pompee, once a wealthy South Florida business owner, was indicted by a federal grand jury.
The charge: slavery.
It was the latest in a string of human trafficking cases in Florida, a growing problem that has drawn the attention of police, domestic violence workers and lawmakers.
Although human trafficking is a federal offense, no state law has been written to prohibit it. Two Florida legislators have proposed bills making trafficking a crime so state authorities do not have to rely on federal investigators. If the proposed bills become law, people like the Pompees could also face second-degree felonies in state court.
"You have federal law enforcement spread thin, understandably so, on terrorism," said state Sen. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-Pembroke Pines, who is sponsoring a sex trafficking bill in the Senate. "We want to get the Florida Department of Law Enforcement involved to pursue human trafficking cases. We want to use our criminal laws and go after them, prosecute the traffickers."
Under the Senate version of the bill, traffickers could also face prosecution under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization statute, which would mean authorities could seize the assets of traffickers. A similar version in the House has also been proposed; sponsors say the bills have wide support among lawmakers.
According to the Department of Justice, 18,000 to 20,000 people are trafficked into the United States each year. Experts do not know whether the number is on the rise; prosecutions certainly are.
As of February, the Department of Justice had 143 open trafficking investigations, twice as many as in 2001, said Mohamed Matar, co-director of the Protection Project, a research group devoted to trafficking issues at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.
From 2001-03, the federal government prosecuted 106 people for human trafficking; 74 of those cases involved allegations of sex trafficking. A large number of the victims were brought to the United States from Mexico, Matar said.
It is unclear how many of those cases originated in Florida, but Matar said the Sunshine State is a hot spot for modern-day slavery.
"There's a lot going on in Florida," Matar said. "Florida, because of the location, because of the tourism, because of the conferences, there is a demand for prostitution."
Women and children are often brought to the United States to be prostitutes. Some brothels even cater to migrant workers.
Many trafficking cases are tied to the agriculture industry: Illegal aliens are smuggled into the country to harvest vegetables and fruits, only to owe thousands of dollars to the smugglers who brought them here or to the field bosses who control their housing, food and paychecks.
Also, experts say, domestic work in homes and hotels is also prime for modern-day slaves. Foreigners are promised decent-paying tourism jobs, only to work long hours for low pay in hotels - all while sleeping in shifts in overcrowded apartments. Still others, like the little Haitian girl in Pembroke Pines, are brought here as domestic workers, only to become indentured servants.
"We are becoming more and more sensitive to the problem," said Douglas Molloy, chief assistant U.S. Attorney in Fort Myers. "The most important weapon we have is not to take the spotlight off this. As long as we keep the focus on it, we will make it a lot less profitable for traffickers and a lot less dangerous for victims."
Only a handful of trafficking cases have made it to the court system recently:
In 1999, investigators discovered two Mexican brothers, Ramiro and Juan Ramos, were smuggling thousands of illegal workers into the United States and buying and selling them as migrant farm workers all over the southeast.
The brothers charged the workers for smuggling them in, monitored them 24 hours a day and charged them inflated rent for substandard housing. In 2002, a federal judge in Fort Myers sentenced the brothers to 12 years in prison.
A Collier County man named Jose Tecum kidnapped a young girl from his native Guatemalan village to the United States through Mexico. The girl lived with Tecum and his wife, picking tomatoes during the day. Tecum destroyed her identification cards and raped her repeatedly. After Tecum was accused of beating his wife, investigators discovered the girl. In 2000, Tecum was sentenced to nine years in prison by a federal court on kidnapping and slavery charges.
Six Florida brothels were raided in 1997, and FBI and U.S. Border Patrol agents discovered the women were victims of sex trafficking. The women, mostly Mexican, were promised good jobs in the United States, but when they arrived they were beaten, raped and forced to work as prostitutes in trailers in migrant farm worker communities.
The traffickers forced the women to work 12-hour days of sex with 20 to 30 men each, all to pay off their smuggling debt. In 1999, one of the ringleaders, Rogerio Cadena, pleaded guilty in federal court in West Palm Beach to slavery and prostitution charges. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Such cases are lengthy, expensive and detailed, which may explain why it takes years for federal prosecutors to bring them to trial.
"These are difficult cases to investigate," said Molloy, who prosecuted both the Tecum and Ramos cases. "For one thing, many people who are trafficked are distrustful of law enforcement. There are also language and cultural barriers."
George Collins, a detective at the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office, has been investigating labor trafficking cases in the Panhandle for about a year. He has discovered that hundreds of Eastern Europeans, in the United States on legal work visas, are working 90-hour weeks at beach hotels without overtime or benefits.
Their paychecks and their living arrangements are controlled not by the hotels, but by employee leasing agencies. The agencies have threatened the workers if they complain about the conditions, and in some cases agency bosses get violent, Collins said.
"It's forced labor," he added.
Such cases are often difficult and expensive to investigate.
"People go back home," he said. "Others are illegal. We have lots and lots of victims, but nobody wants to cooperate."
Years ago, victims of trafficking were asked to testify against their captors and then deported. In 2000, the federal government created a special visa for trafficking victims, allowing them to stay in the United States legally. So far, 368 victims have the T visa.
And earlier this month, the federal government announced a toll-free number, 1-888-373-7888, run by the Covenant House, to allow victims to call for help.
A statewide coalition of experts has formed in hopes of educating law enforcement, social workers and others who may have access to trafficking victims. Domestic violence shelters across the state have also helped trafficking victims abused by their captors.
The Human Trafficking Project Team is part of the Florida State University Center for the Advancement of Human Rights. In February, the center released a 250-page report that detailed the human trafficking problem in Florida and how officials can recognize such cases.
In Pembroke Pines, it was the local police department that first had contact with the young Haitian victim. The girl's school had called police after suspecting abuse.
That was in 1999.
Last week, after the indictment, 47-year-old Marie Pompee was released from jail after posting bail on the slavery charges. Her husband fled the country years ago. He is facing similar charges. Their son also fled, and is facing sex abuse charges.
The couple's lavish home is in foreclosure.
The girl is now a teenager and is in foster care. South Florida's Haitian community has followed the case closely, and nicknamed the girl "Little Hope."
- Tamara Lush can be reached at 727 893-8612 or at lush@sptimes.com
