A New Jer­sey woman was con­victed of human traf­fick­ing and visa fraud yes­ter­day in fed­eral court. She stood accused of lur­ing girls from Togo and Ghana and forc­ing them to work in her braid­ing salons for no pay. The women lured in were between the ages of 10 and 19.

From this Asso­ci­ated Press arti­cle that we found at MSN Money, writer Saman­tha Henry explains the con­vic­tion, and the two views of the defense and prosecution.

Pros­e­cu­tors argued that Akouavi Kpade Afo­labi, called “Sis­ter” by the women she over­saw, helped bring at least 20 girls between the ages of 10 and 19 from the West African nations of Togo and Ghana on fraud­u­lent visas to New Jer­sey start­ing in 2002.

They said she manip­u­lated the impov­er­ished young women, who aspired to live bet­ter lives in Amer­ica, and kept them in slavery-like con­di­tions while steal­ing all their pay — even tips as mea­ger as 50 cents.

Afolabi’s lawyer, Bukie Ade­tula, coun­tered that his client was con­sid­ered a benev­o­lent mother fig­ure and revered com­mu­nity leader — both in her native Togo and New Jer­sey. He said she was known for lend­ing peo­ple money and help­ing young women escape their poverty-stricken home­land to learn a mar­ketable skill in America.

“I don’t think the jury quite got it, the whole essence of the defense that this was cul­tural; the argu­ment that they (Afo­labi) brought Togo to Amer­ica,” Ade­tula said.
…

Paul J. Fish­man, the U.S. attor­ney for New Jer­sey, said the gov­ern­ment will seek a life sen­tence for Afo­labi, even though she could get a lighter sen­tence under fed­eral guidelines.

“The evi­dence pre­sented at trial revealed that these young women some as young as 10 years old endured uncon­scionable indig­ni­ties,” Fish­man said in a state­ment. “The defen­dant ruled over her vic­tims with threats, vio­lence, even voodoo curses. We will seek an appro­pri­ately long sen­tence that reflects the seri­ous­ness of Afolabi’s conduct.”

Dur­ing the month­long trial, pros­e­cu­tors out­lined a scheme they say Afo­labi and her ex-husband and son — who have pleaded guilty — used to keep the young women tightly con­trolled. They said the women were beaten, psy­cho­log­i­cally abused and, in some cases, sex­u­ally abused, while being kept from phon­ing home, con­tact­ing friends or fam­ily, or access­ing their pass­ports and other documents.

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