Texas couple found guilty of keeping African girl as slave for 16 years

A Guinean president’s son and his wife have been found guilty of enslaving an African girl for 16 years and are facing up to 20 years in prison.

Mohamad Toure, son of Guinea’s first president Ahmed Sekou Toure, and his wife, Denise Cros-Toure, were convicted in relation to the forced labor of a woman for more than a decade.

The woman was just five years old when the couple took her from her rural Guinean village in 2000. The woman’s mother at the time tried to hide her child from them when she learned she was being taken but failed.

"The woman was whipped with an electrical cord, hosed down with water, and forced to sleep alone in a nearby park as punishment for disobedience."

The couple brought the woman to Texas and isolated her there. They required her to do all kinds of housework while living with them in their home in Southlake. The girl was made to cook, clean, do yard work, do laundry, paint and take care of the couple’s five children. She was not allowed to go to school. She was neither compensated for her services all these years.

Moreover, the woman was whipped with an electrical cord, hosed down with water, and forced to sleep alone in the backyard as punishment for disobedience. She was referred to by the couple as a “dog” and a “slave.”

In 2016, the woman escaped with the help of neighbors and that’s when her case came to light.

The couple is currently facing possibly 20 years in prison after having been found guilty of forced labor. A sentencing date has yet to be passed.

Assistant attorney general Eric Dreiband condemned the actions of the couple and vowed to “vigorously prosecute these cases to hold human traffickers accountable and bring justice to their victims.”

The Department of Justice added that the husband and wife are powerful people who used their political connections to take advantage of an “uneducated, impoverished” girl.

Meanwhile, US Attorney Nealy Cox was grateful for the neighbors and witnesses who extended their help to the girl in order for her to escape.

“If we want to wipe out human trafficking, we need the whole community to support the effort and be alert,” he concluded.

FLIGHT STEWARDESS SAVES A TEEN FROM A HUMAN TRAFFICKER

Alert is what a flight attendant was when she heroically saved a teenage girl from becoming a victim of human trafficking. The attendant trusted her instincts when she noticed that a teenage girl on flight was behaving strangely as she was seated next to a man who spoke for her throughout the flight. The stewardess found a way to privately communicate with the girl in the airplane’s bathroom, sneaking a note for her there. It was then that the girl sent a message, a cry for help. Authorities were informed and the man was soon apprehended.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING STATISTICS

Human trafficking is reportedly the third largest international crime industry today following illegal drugs and arms trafficking. According to the website Statista.com, despite the growing efforts to curtail this crime, the number of victims between 2008 and 2016 doubled with Africa as the region with the most victims in 2016. However, the number of convictions has doubled too in the last decade which is a sign that efforts to eradicate this terror are working.