Out of Africa - Child Maid Trafficking Comes To the US

Imagine a child working up to 20 hours a day, mopping, vacuuming, dusting, cleaning, doing laundry...with no breaks and no days off. Picture her at age 10 with red, chapped hands covered with hardened dead skin, sleeping in a dark unheated garage, washing her clothes in a bucket...while the wealthy family that enslaves her is living steps away in a Tuscan villa-styled 5-bedroom, two-story home.

This could never happen in the US, right?

It did, in a gated community in California, where for nearly two years Shyima -- a victim of child maid trafficking -- was kept by a wealthy Egyptian couple who had five children, one a girl the same age as Shyima.

In many cases, girls like Shyima are leased by their parents to earn money for their impoverished families. According to an Associated Press article, the practice is common in Africa:

Tens of thousands of children in Africa, some as young as 3, are recruited every year to work as domestic servants. They are on call 24 hours a day and are often beaten if they make a mistake. Children are in demand because they earn less than adults and are less likely to complain. In just one city — Casablanca — a 2001 survey by the Moroccan government found more than 15,000 girls under 15 working as maids.

The U.S. State Department found that over the past year, children have been trafficked to work as servants in at least 33 of Africa's 53 countries. Children from at least 10 African countries were sent as maids to the U.S. and Europe. But the problem is so well hidden that authorities — including the U.N., Interpol and the State Department — have no idea how many child maids now work in the West.

The article is heartbreaking to read.

Thanks to an anonymous tip, the California Department of Social Services learned of Shyima's plight. The couple involved pleaded guilty to forced labor and slavery; they were fined, jailed in federal prison, and deported. The story has a happy ending for Shyima, but if you read until the end, you'll see that this isn't the case for another little girl somewhere in Cairo.