The Slaves in Our Midst

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In fact, once here, Gonzalez was paid $500 a month for cooking, housecleaning, running errands, doing laundry and caring for the baby, including providing physical therapy. She says she actually worked an average of 77 hours a week performing all of those duties, receiving an average wage of $1.60 an hour. Oh yes, she was promised health insurance, but she ended up having to pay all of her medical bills.

These allegations are contained in a lawsuit that Gonzalez brought against Vila and Nielsen in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The defendants have not responded directly to the charges; instead they have claimed diplomatic immunity at the request, they say, of the government of Argentina. Fortunately for Gonzalez, a very good federal judge, Paul Friedman, is hearing the case.

Gonzalez's claims mirror those made by thousands of other women brought to Washington from impoverished countries. They say they are lured here under false guarantees, exploited with impunity -- sometimes sexually -- and then must endure their abusers dancing away under the defense of diplomatic immunity.

Condoleezza Rice can change all that.

The State Department routinely recommends immunity for diplomats in lawsuits brought by domestic servants, finding that contracts for services, including the hiring of domestic help, don't fall within the meaning of the "professional and commercial activity" exception to diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

If Rice wants to show the world that the Bush administration's concerns about trafficking in people and labor and sexual exploitation apply equally in America -- and if she wants to ensure that women such as Lucia Gonzalez have legal redress for violations of their rights -- then the secretary of state has an opportunity.

Judge Friedman has asked for the State Department's views in the Gonzalez case. All that Rice has to do is interpret labor contracts for domestic servants as within the scope of the commercial activities exception. That will keep America from siding with the exploiters.

Even that, as future columns will show, would be only a first step. Much more is needed to end this scourge.

kingc@washpost.com