Wei Tang Australia In-depth analysis of selected cases
crowded accommodation, lack of beds, lack of privacy, isolation, explanation of seemingly voluntary victim behaviour by means of cultural beliefs and practices, climate of fear. Weak-
nesses in the mosaic of evidence include failure to escape, returning to abusive employers, giving up passports to employer deliberately, some support system in the form of co-workers
in a fast food outlet. A particularly dificult evidential issue was the seeming consent of the victims to their exploitation.
On a factual level, it is of interest that the defendants used law enforcement, politicians and abuse of the immigration system to coerce workers to accede to exploitative conditions.
Two defendants were convicted of peonage, document servitude and other related charges. The convictions were afirmed on appeal.
The defendants recruited nine Filipino workers to work as housekeepers in a hotel that they owned. The defendants applied for visas for all the victims for which they paid 1,200 as
the total sum. The defendants supplied employment contracts to all of the victims which provided for a work schedule of six days a week at eight hours a day with a pay rate of 6.05
an hour and included holiday and overtime pay. The contracts also stipulated that the defend- ants would provide housing and that the victims would pay the defendants 150 a month
for this expense. Finally the contracts stated that the defendants were responsible for the transportation costs of transporting the victims to and from the United States as required
by United States law.
Before the victims were interviewed for their visas, the defendants met with all of them in the Philippines, informed them that they, the defendants, would not be paying for the trans-
portation costs, as required by United States law but that if the victims told the United States oficials this information, their visas would be denied. Subsequently, the defendants instructed
the victims not to disclose this. The victims were also told that they would not receive holiday or overtime pay and that the victims would be required to repay the defendants for their
portion of the 1,200 processing fee.
While in the Philippines, the defendants initially had some trouble obtaining visas for the victims. They told the victims about these problems and showed them a letter from a Congress
person in South Dakota that would remedy the problem. Soon after this, the visas were approved and the victims were led to believe that the defendants were well connected politi-
cally. The court noted this circumstance as evidence that the victims subjectively feared the defendants and felt compelled by them, thus supporting the peonage conviction.
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When the victims arrived in the United States, the defendants demanded that the victims hand over their passports, visas and immigration documents. Many of the victims did not
want to relinquish these documents but obeyed because of the cultural norm in the Philip- pines to “honour and respect” their employers. The defendants reduced the victims’ pay to
3 an hour and also charged each person the full cost of the total processing fee even though the defendants only paid a total of 1,200 for all the victims’ visas. Additional charges began
to be added to the victims’ debt such as transportation to and from work and personal items that the victims neither desired nor requested. The victims fell quickly into even more “debt”
than they had initially incurred, and the “debt” was increasing at a rapid pace.
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Peonage is prohibited by 18 United States Code Chapter 77, Section 581. It is deined by case law as: a condition of enforced servitude, by which the servitor is restrained of his liberty and compelled to labour in liquida-
tion of some debt or obligation, real or pretended, against his will. Among the relevant cases which deine the elements of the offence are D.C. 123 Fed. 071; In re Lewis C.C. 114 Fed. 903; U. S. v. McClellan D.C. 127
Fed. 971; Rev. St. U.S. See Black’s Law Dictionary Online, 2nd ed. at http:thelawdictionary.orgpeonage.
Since it would clearly be impossible for the victims to repay this “debt” at the salary they were receiving, the defendants required the victims to obtain additional employment outside
the hotel. They defendants helped the victims ind employment in fast-food and other service industry jobs. This meant that they worked even longer hours than formerly and suffered
sleep deprivation and absence of leisure time. The victims were not permitted to leave the hotel owned by the defendants without asking permission. The victims were usually prohibited
from speaking to people outside the hotel and to non-Filipino workers at the hotel. In one instance, the American workers from a fast-food restaurant, where one of the victims worked,
invited several victims to go bowling. One of the defendants drove the victims and remained at the bowling alley with them. The victims were not allowed to accept rides home from their
American co-workers, so they had to walk home in freezing weather.
Seven workers shared one two-bedroom apartment for which they each paid a large sum relative to the rent paid by their employers. They were not given a key to the apartment so
that they were forced to leave the door unlocked at all times, and frequently one employer would arrive unannounced and search through the workers’ belongings. During the second
stage of their employment conditions were even worse, with some workers without a bed on which to sleep. The court expressly mentions living conditions as important to the conviction
on the charge of peonage.
Even though the victims were working long hours at the hotel and at their second jobs, their “debts” were steadily increasing. The defendants maintained extreme control over the victims’
earnings both from the hotel and the outside jobs. The defendants would set limits on how much money the victims were allowed to send home. Defendants held regular meetings to
berate the victims for their debts and to remind them of the need to repay them. Minutes were sometimes taken at these meetings. The defendants would threaten to have the victims
deported if they failed to pay. They also threatened to have them sent back to the Philippines in a box this threat appeared in the minutes of at least one meeting.
With their visas about to expire, all of the victims were still in debt to the defendants even though they had given up most of their earnings. At this point, the defendants required
the victims to write letters requesting reemployment. While none of the victims wanted to continue to work for the defendants, all of them felt that it would be impossible to repay
their debt working in the Philippines. The victims travelled home to the Philippines, resigned to the fact that they would have to return to the United States and continue to work for
the defendants. The defendants restarted the visa process and the victims’ debts continued to increase with
another round of processing fees and transportation costs. This time the defendants gave the victims copies of fake checks to show United States oficials when the victims went to obtain
their visas. The checks were supposed to show that the victims had been paid in accordance with the employment contracts, even though they had not been. The visas were approved
and the victims returned to the same situation in the United States.
Eventually one victim was able to escape by lying and saying she must return to the Philip- pines because her mother was dying. One of the defendants escorted her to security at the
airport and only then returned her passport. This victim never returned to the United States to work for the defendants, but the defendants would not leave her alone. They wanted to
ensure that she pay her debt and they harassed her via e-mail and telephone to that end. Because of this harassment, the victim contacted the United States Embassy in the Philippines
and an investigation was initiated. Two other victims attempted to escape and the defendants threatened them and called the police and FBI to have them arrested. A police oficer talked
to the victims and noted that the victims were “terriied” and that they refused to talk in front of the defendants. The police oficer left but later returned because he feared that the
defendants had used him to intimidate the victims
This case included the following kinds of evidence: testimony of the victims themselves, testimony from the chief of police and the county attorney, expert testimony and documentary
evidence. The documentary evidence consisted of: immigration petitions, employment con- tracts, debt contracts and minutes of meetings the victims were forced to attend to discuss
their debt.
A legal issue arose concerning expert testimony: The expert testimony was given by an expert in human traficking and domestic worker
exploitation who testiied about certain warning signs that often indicate the employee is not working voluntarily but rather in a “climate of fear” or psychological coercion. She further
testiied that she believed several of these signs were present in the case. The court ruled that this testimony was only relevant insofar as it provided this broader context in order to
aid the jury to understand the workers’ actions, to understand the conditions under which they laboured and to assess the truthfulness of their allegations. However, expert testimony
usurped the jury’s functions when the expert expressed an opinion on the strength of the government’s case and the credibility of its witnesses and when it expressed the opinion that
the workers were not controlling their money—a fact which should have been left to the jury to ind out.
The following issues were addressed in this case which relate to the mosaic of evidence. In learning from the issues below, it should be noted that the defendants were convicted of
peonage which requires: “compulsory service in payment of a debt”.
635
Thus involuntariness is part of this crime which impacts upon issues of consent.
1. Victim consent: The defendants argued that the victims’ employment was voluntary and used as proof the fact that the victims returned to work following their trips to
the Philippines. They also maintained that the victims could have stopped working at any time if they were willing to return to the Philippines. This argument was
rejected by the court which brought into account the defendants’ coercive acts which compelled the workers to stay in the United States In this regard the court noted
the defendants’ obduracy in collecting their debts and their threat to hunt victims down and harm them if they did not pay, in conjunction with the fact that it would
have been dificult, if not impossible, for the workers to meet their obligations on salaries in the Philippines.
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2. Seemingly innocent threats: The defendants claimed that they were legally entitled to explain to workers that their visas were contingent on continued employment.
However, the court distinguished between this seemingly innocent explanation and the reality, by which the defendants threatened to call in immigration authorities
for breach of arbitrary rules, including a prohibition on speaking to people outside the hotel.
635
See previous footnote for citations.
636
See section 3.3.6.1 on “Failure to escape or seek help” for the court’s analysis of this issue.
3. Victim failure to escape: The court ruled that even if the victims had opportunities to escape at certain points, it is reasonable to conclude that the employment was invol-
untary at least at some points. 4. Facts explicitly mentioned as important to the conviction: This case is interesting in that
the court explicitly mentions certain facts as important to a conviction of peonage. Among the facts mentioned as important are the following: threats of physical force and
calling in immigration authorities; the workers’ dificult working and living conditions which did not allow leisure time, resulted in sleep deprivation and included non-payment or minimal
payment; the victims’ particular vulnerabilities immigration status, little money, dependency upon defendants for housing and transportation, creditor-debtor relationship; the victim’s
fear of one defendant’s volatile temper and of both defendants’ seemingly powerful position; the defendants’ continual isolation of the workers; the defendants’ constant supervision of
victims’ movements, mail, money; the defendants’ keeping a key to the victims’ residence so that they could conduct random inspections while refusing to allow the workers a key of
their own, the victims’ debt bondage where at no point was the value of the workers’ labour suficient to liquidate the debt and there was no limit to the length of the services required
to satisfy the obligation.