'Modern-Day Slavery' Prompts Rescue Efforts

Worries of Retaliation

For CASA, which has rescued more than 100 domestic workers in the past six years, Santacruz's call set a plan in motion. CASA staffer Silvia Navas talked through the details of her situation in secretive phone calls. They met at McDonald's a few weeks before the rescue and chose a date and a time.

Minutes after Santacruz loaded her bags into the van that night, the CASA crew headed to a nearby townhouse for a second rescue. Germania Velasco, 34, climbed inside the van and embraced Santacruz, whom she knew because their employers both work at the OAS.

"Estoy siendo rescatada!" she said breathlessly into her cell phone, assuring a friend that she was fine because she was being rescued.

Inside the house, Velasco's employer, Veronica Peña, and her husband, were shouting at Navas and CASA lawyer Jayesh Rathod. Navas said Peña argued that "everybody's doing this," referring to the low wages paid to domestic help. Navas said she replied, "That's why we're here."

Peña, a second secretary at Ecuador's mission to the OAS, said she did not have authorization from her government to comment.

Santacruz and Velasco came to the United States on visas that allowed them to follow their employers. Like many others, they signed contracts that were then ignored by their employers, according to their attorney, Victor Glasberg. Santacruz said she wasn't given time to read the contract and was not given a copy. Velasco's contract promised to pay her $6 an hour, roughly three times what she ended up earning, according to Glasberg.

He is seeking back wages for them -- he estimates that Santacruz is owed about $20,000 for 20 months of work and that Velasco is owed $28,000 for nearly two years of work. Under federal wage law, the women could recover twice that amount if their employers knowingly refused to pay the proper wages.

Santacruz's employer, Efrain Baus, first secretary at the same mission to the OAS, refused to comment. His attorney, Samuel G. McTyre, in a recent letter to Glasberg, said Baus and his wife would be "very likely" to settle the dispute if it could remain private. He noted that the couple was surprised by Santacruz's claim and that "she knew the terms and conditions of her employment . . . and agreed to them without any complaint for nearly two years." He specifically denied that they have her passport.

Because the stakes are so high, advocates say, domestic workers are often pressured not to seek redress. The letter from Baus's attorney, for example, mentions that Santacruz's claim "may or may not" affect her relatives' jobs with Baus's family and friends in Ecuador.

Wearing Her Despair

Joy Zarembka, 32, brings a personal passion to her work. She is the daughter of a domestic worker from Kenya. And a few years ago, she learned of a live-in maid in her parents' Gaithersburg neighborhood who had not been paid in five years of work for a Cameroonian couple, according to court documents.

Zarembka had seen the teenager often and assumed that she was the oldest child. "In hindsight, now I can remember the sadness in her eyes," she said. Zarembka's father had contacted CASA, which alerted law enforcement.

Zarembka's outrage prompted her in 2000 to work for a coalition of labor, religious and human rights groups that later became Break the Chain Campaign. The group has since assisted more than 100 domestic workers.

"It takes so little for us as Americans to pay a proper wage, especially when you juxtapose that against the paychecks of the abusers," she said.

Until recently, Break the Chain and CASA were the only groups in the Washington area helping domestic employees. But the growth of the problem has spurred the creation of new groups and new initiatives. With private funding, for example, the nonprofit Project Hope International is planning to purchase two houses to shelter trafficking victims.