frankenlies.com
#23: Franken's Sum of Saipan Servitude
Dab in the middle of his passage on DeLay-Saipan, on page 179 of Truth, Franken writes (emphasis mine),
"[T]here were plenty of stories and plenty of individuals to back up the allegations. Besides 'Katrina' and Tu Tao May, there were the 150 victims in the ten involuntary servitude cases brought by the Clinton Justice Department at the end of the nineties."
From the context of his passage, Franken clearly leads his readers to believe that all 10 of these cases involve Saipan or the Mariana Islands. Research, however, reveals that the case against Kwon's seedy karaoke bar (see #20) appears to be one of only two Clinton Justice Department indictments involving involuntary servitude in Saipan, neither of which was connected to any garment factories.1 All of the other cases appear to involve cases within the continental United States.2,3
Again, Franken has misled his readers.
[Special note: If you wish to write to me regarding this post, please read this first. Thank you.]
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Notes:
1 The two cases that this writer found involving involuntary servitude (slavery) in Saipan are here and here. In neither case are garment factories cited. Both cases are related in a sense; both cases connect one family. The cases were reported in Saipan itself: "Karaoke owners plead guilty to forcing workers into prostitution," Saipan Tribune, October 6, 1999. http://www.saipantribune.com/archives/newsstoryarch.aspx?newsID=3895&cat=1&archdte=10/6/1999 12:00:00 AM.
The Clinton administration also filed a case under US v. Zheng Qiaochhai, Zheng Qioyu, and Lin Xiao (1998). This case targeted traffickers of Chinese women who were later abused in Saipan. Again, no garment factories are cited. This appears to be one of five such trafficking cases brought in CNMI. See Amy O’Neill Richard, "International Trafficking in Women to the United States: A Contemporary Manifestation of Slavery and Organized Crime," DCI Exceptional Intelligence Analyst Program, November 1999. p. 48 (p. 58 of the PDF). http://www.cia.gov/csi/monograph/women/trafficking.pdf. Nearly all of the cases in this report involve trafficking and slavery within the continental United States.
2 This writer's findings are drawn from numerous sources, including:
... Carol J. Gomez et al., "Sex Trafficking of Women in the United States", Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, March 2001. http://action.web.ca/home/catw/attach/sex_traff_us.pdf. This research piece cites scores of trafficking and slave-type cases from 1990 through 2000, nearly all of which involve instances within the continental United States.
... "Florida: Smugglings, Workers," a sample case from 1998. http://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/more.php?id=289_0_3_0.
... "Women Suffer Modern Slavery," April 1, 2000. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/04/01/national/main179014.shtml.
... Estes, Richard J. and Neil Alan Weiner. The Commercial Sexual
Exploitation of Children
in the U.S., Canada and Mexico (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania School
of Social Work, 2001). Cited at
http://caster.ssw.upenn.edu/~restes/CSEC_Files/Charts/Traffickers_Organizers_010910.pdf.
... Michael J. Sniffen, "Reno starts task force to against (sic) slavery," Associated Press, April 24, 1998. Archived at the Hannibal Courier-Post, accessed January 13, 2005. www.hannibal.net/stories/042498/Reno.html. Also available at http://www.lmtonline.com/news/archive/042498/pagea10.pdf.
... FBI program, http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/civilrights/slavery.htm.
3 Franken appears to have gleaned his information from the May 2005 Galveston Daily News article (http://galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=619d24435d0c3d0e), which, in turn, appears to have gotten its information here: "Three Individuals Indicted for Forcing Women Into Slavery and Prostitution In Northern Mariana Islands," U.S. Department of Justice press release, November 20, 1998. http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/1998/November/560cr.htm (also cited above). The release states, "Over the past three years alone, the Justice Department has brought ten involuntary servitude cases involving more than 150 victims." However, this statement simply appears to be a follow-up to a sentence three paragraphs above that: "Last April [1998], Attorney General Janet Reno announced an inter-agency federal task force to combat the serious problem of modern-day slavery and worker exploitation in the United States" (emphasis mine).