http://cbs13.com/national/haitian.slave.crime.2.669489.html

Mar 4, 2008 3:00 pm US/Pacific

2 Fla. Women Convicted Of Enslaving Haitian Teen
Mother, Daughter Kept Teen As Slave In Home for 6 Years

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) ― A mother and her adult daughter were found guilty Tuesday of keeping a Haitian teen as their slave for six years in their South Florida home.

Evelyn Theodore, 74, and her daughter, Maude Paulin, 52, were convicted of conspiring to violate Simone Celestin's 13th Amendment rights to be free from slavery and forcing her to work for them.

[highlight]Paulin, a Miami-Dade County teacher,[/highlight] also was convicted of harboring an illegal alien for financial gain.

Theodore and Paulin's ex-husband, Saintfort Paulin, were both acquitted of that count but convicted on a lesser charge of harboring an illegal alien. Claire Telasco, Paulin's sister, was acquitted of conspiracy and forced labor charges.

Attorneys for Maude Paulin and Theodore said each woman faces between seven and 10 years in prison at sentencing, set for May 20. Both attorneys said they will appeal.

Prosecutors alleged that Celestin was stolen at age 5 from her mother and grandmother in a remote mountain village and forced to pretend she was an orphan at the orphanage Theodore ran with her late husband in Ranquitte, Haiti.

At age 14, the girl was taken to the U.S. on a 29-day visa. Prosecutors alleged that for the next six years, Celestin's life consisted of 15-hour work days as an unpaid servant, with no schooling. She escaped in 2005.

Celestin, now 22, testified Wednesday that she considered suicide after years of beatings and intimidation. She tearfully described sleeping on the floor, rummaging through cast-off clothes in the garage for something to wear, bathing from a bucket or a garden hose and scrubbing floors when she should have been in school.

She said Theodore and Maude Paulin often struck her with their hands, shoes or objects such as a curling iron or a mortar if she didn't finish the work to their satisfaction.

The defendants denied mistreating Celestin. Defense attorneys argued during trial that her allegations of abuse were motivated by her desire to be a permanent legal resident of the U.S.

The convicted defendants remain free on bond.

In court documents, prosecutors identified Celestin as a "restavek." The term is a Haitian Creole word meaning "one who stays with" and applies to poor children who work for wealthier families in exchange for food, shelter and the promise of school. Many end up victims of physical and sexual abuse.

[highlight]UNICEF estimates 300,000 children in Haiti are restaveks. It is unknown how many restaveks are among the estimated 14,500 to 17,500 involuntary servants estimated to be trafficked into the U.S. each year.[/highlight]

(Something that the niggers (and media) totally ignore, while droning on and on over slavery that happened hundreds of years ago.
I'll bet that, on average, White slave owners treated their charges a hell of a lot better than niggers treat their modern-day slaves.)