Meet Shyima, a modern day Cinderella.

Shyima was nine years old when she started working for a well-to-do Egyptian family — the Ibrahims — who moved from Cairo, Egypt to Irvine, California. She spent long days ironing, cooking, dusting, mopping, and laundering. In exchange, she received $45 a month and slept in the non-heated, non-air conditioned garage of the family’s fancy-schmancy five bedroom home. Not only was Shyima forbidden to use the household’s washing machine (she had to clean her clothes in a bucket), during a trip to Disneyland Park she was the designated valet who carted around the family’s belongings, while her employers’ children (who had nicknamed her “stupid”) rode Space Mountain. For Shyima there was never an opportunity for playing with toys or other children. Just like the Cinderella in the fairy tale who labored as a scullery maid for a trio of mean girls, it was all work, work, work.



An anonymous tipster — likely a neighbor — contacted the California Department of Social Services about the child who lived in the garage, and the Ibrahims were busted by the local police department. Shyima was placed in foster care and, eventually, found a real-life Prince Charming in a caring American couple who adopted her and took her to Disneyland to ride the rides. Today, at age 19, she aspires to a career in law enforcement and has no contact with her family in northern Africa. Her former employers who pled guilty to charges of “forced labor and slavery,”  were sentenced to a federal prison and deportation. The court also ordered the Ibrahims to pay back wages to Shyima.

Tragically, the part of Shyima’s story which is atypical is the ‘happy ending’ part. Every year tens of thousands of African boys and girls are offered by their parents as cheap, live-in household help to strangers. John Miller of the U.S. State Department estimates that of the 700,000 or so individuals that are trafficked yearly across international borders, half of them are children. They are sold into sex slavery, factory work, farm labor, conscription, and domestic servitude. Back in Cairo, Shyima’s illiterate parents had, in fact, signed a contract with a maid recruiter “leasing” out her services in exchange for money, shelter, and food. 



While such arrangements are anathema in countries where children aren’t considered chattel and where child welfare laws are tough, the poorest of the poor in developing nations have a different mindset. Writing for The New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof notes that for those who live, literally, in the garbage dumps of Phnom Penh (Cambodia), parents view a job for their children at a sweat shop as a sign of upward mobility.



What to make of all this? Perhaps the core issue that should concern Americans, who already generously give umpteen dollars in (unconstitutional) foreign aid to the Third World and to private organizations like Free the Slaves and World Vision’s Children of War Centers, is: What kind of values are we importing when we welcome into the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave those who don’t share our abhorrence of such practices as child maids, child brides, child soldiers, or child prostitutes. Excusing such “customs” in the hallowed name of cultural diversity or globalization is to excuse criminal behavior and to dumb down our values, as innocents get hurt and human life is cheapened.



Shyima’s employers, for instance, had figured out how to game the system well enough to lie to embassy officials and sneak her in to the United States, as well as claiming, to the Irvine Police Department, that she was a relative. In her case, unlike countless of other immigration imbroglios involving illegal entry into the U.S., justice prevailed because the perps were caught and because the rule of law was honored.



Frankly, the lesson that can’t be hammered home enough to the unassimilated (whether rich or poor, commoner or dignitary) is that we Westerners have our own pesky custom: We punish those who are cruel to children. All children. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.

Isabel Lyman holds a doctorate in social science and is the author of The Homeschooling Revolution (2000).

(AP Photo/Ric Francis)


 

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mbenoit said:

	Scarier than Fiction A few weeks ago there was a new episode of NBC's Law and Order - Special Victims Unit which touched on the issue of child slavery in the U.S. It makes me feel guilty to have been entertained by a fictional account of real life situations such as Shyima's tragic story.
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January 20, 2009
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AntiMarxist said:

	slavery in America. Thank God that a good Samaritan had said something to the authorities, this is an outrage and should not happen in America, EVER.
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January 20, 2009
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