Belated Justice for Victims of NJ's Hair-Braiding Slavery Ring

Here's a reminder to all of us who occasionally forget that poverty in America also encompasses people who don't have homes to worry about losing or car loans to worry about paying or school clothes to worry about having donated.

Earlier this month a man from the African nation of Togo was sentenced to 24 years in prison in New Jersey for smuggling African girls and women into the U.S. to work as slaves in hair braiding salons. From 2002 to 2007, the man, Lassissi Afolabi, in partnership with his ex-wife and her son, brought at least 20 women to America to work 14-hour days for no pay at all.

The workers, or victims, braided hair at salons in very civilized-seeming places like Newark and East Orange, New Jersey. That's the thing about modern-day slavery, though; it happens where people least expect it. It's more than a bit sickening that almost 150 years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves are still being brought from the very same parts of Africa to work here in America.

Afolabi managed to produce fraudulent work visas for the women. Once they got to America, some were sexually assaulted and some were beaten. Their passports were taken from them. They were told not to learn English, make friends or keep their tips — or else. Their captors even tricked some into believing that a voodoo curse would harm them if they tried to escape. (The accused ex-wife's lawyer had the gall to try to explain in court that this was actually a misunderstood apprenticeship program. Right.)

Afolabi was also ordered to pay close to $4 million in restitution to the women, which amounts to double what they should have earned in wages and tips. It's not clear how he'll get that kind of money from behind bars. Maybe he can braid fellow inmates' hair and have it paid off in, oh, a few hundred years.

Photo credit: maleika2006