Long Island Couple Convicted Of Slavery

A Long Island jury didn't take long to convict the Sabhnanis on all 12 counts; including forced labor, involuntary servitude and harboring illegal aliens:

A jury on Monday convicted a millionaire couple of enslaving two Indonesian women they brought to their mansion to work as housekeepers.

Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, and his wife, Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, 45, were each convicted of all charges in a 12-count federal indictment that included forced labor, conspiracy, involuntary servitude, and harboring aliens.

Prosecutors said the women were subjected to repeated psychological and physical abuse and were forced to work 18 hours or more a day.

The Sabhnanis, who have four children and operate a worldwide perfume business out of their Muttontown home on Long Island's Gold Coast, could face up to 40 years in prison, although attorneys predicted the punishment would be considerably less. He is from India, and she is from Indonesia, but both are naturalized U.S. citizens.

My prior coverage is here.

Updating the Long Island Slave Case

One of the women claiming to be slaves for a millionaire couple on Long Island gave testimony in court today, and it was quite chilling. WCBS-TV reports:

A woman who claims she worked as a slave for a wealthy Long Island couple delivered jarring testimony Monday, alleging the couple gave her torturous punishments for the slightest errors in her ways.

The millionaire couple, Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani and his wife Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, who are charged with modern-day slavery, listened as the first of their two housekeeper-servants stunned the courtroom with graphic descriptions of alleged abuse.

The Sabhnanis run a worldwide perfume business out of their home on Long Island's North Shore, where they are under house arrest during this sensational trial. On Monday, jurors were riveted as an alleged slave only identified as "Samirah" choked back tears as she detailed horrendous punishments for minor transgressions. Those punishments included being victimized with umbrellas, knives, and brooms.

Samirah, 51, claimed that at the hands of Mrs. Sabhnani, she was scalded, sliced, clubbed, cut, and pinched. She said her ears were pulled, fingers bent, body taped, and she said she'd even suffered a broken hand.

As for Mr. Sabhnani, Samirah testified that he and some of the couple's four children at times saw her naked, when "the Missus" ordered her to remove her clothes as humiliation.

The Indonesian servant said for small mistakes such as if she slept late or was tardy when beckoned, Mrs. Sabhnani would use "a club to hit me in the mouth til my teeth fell off," she said.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in this case, and I am quite surprised that the Sabhnani's chose not to make a plea deal rather than have these allegations dragged into the papers on a daily basis. It seems to have been a rather poor tactical choice on their part.

If convicted, the Sabhnani's could face 40 years in prison each.

Slavemasters Indicted

Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, 35, and her husband, Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, operate a worldwide perfume business with factories in Singapore and Bahrain.

The two were arrested last week after one of their servants was found wandering outside a doughnut shop on Long Island, wearing only pants and a towel. The woman was believed to have fled the home when she took the trash out the night before.

The couple pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court, and a magistrate judge set bail at $3.5 million and imposed home detention with electronic monitoring.

An indictment handed up Tuesday night formally charged with them with two counts of forced labor and added two counts of harboring illegal residents.

Well, the Sabhnanis look like they'll be getting accustomed to some different fashion ideas than they've been accustomed to.

Technorati: Sabhnani

Long Island Slave Masters Troubles Increase

As if the charges against the Sabhnani's were not enough, Mahender Sabhnani is suing several perfume companies for trademark infringement of a perfume that Sabhnani sells out of the very home where the two slaves were alleged to be held.

Sabhnani contends he launched Attitude in 1995 and that it is sold nationwide. Then in March, Sabhnani read in Women's Wear Daily that L'Oreal was promoting a men's cologne with the same name.

He did some checking and found out that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had canceled his trademark because he had neglected to file some paperwork, and L'Oreal applied to use the name last December, the complaint says. Giorgio Armani Perfumes is a division of L'Oreal.

The case against Varsha Mahender Sabhnani and her husband even more complex than first thought:

Is this merely a case of a sadistic employer, one who hardly needed to save a few hundred dollars a month? Or, as the prosecutors' claim, is it a case of slave trafficking more akin to the 2004 bust of another Long Island couple, José Ibañez and Mariluz Zavala, who held 69 Peruvian compatriots as indentured servants in houses in Amityville, Brentwood and Coram? A lawyer for the Sabhnanis said the case would prove to be "much more involved and complicated."

For the two women now in safety (they are identified only by first names in court documents) it hardly matters what we call their torture, only that they have escaped. In the end, however, how authorities understand and define this case will matter to everyone, from the severity of the penalties to the legal status of the victims.

Details are still emerging, but already this case has pushed lawmakers in Albany to agree on anti-trafficking legislation.

There is another case in Queens that has similar allegations being made - that a family hired a nanny for $700 a month and became a virtual prisoner in the home until she slipped away while the family ate lunch:

Hasmat Ara has filed a lawsuit against Sakina and Kalman Khan in Brooklyn federal court, claiming she was hired to be a live-in caretaker for their young children - at a measly $700 a month - but was forced into "virtual slavery" her first day on the job.

Ara, an immigrant from Bangladesh, claims the couple hid the telephones behind a bolted bedroom door to prevent her from calling for help.

She escaped after 16 months, in April 2006, slipping away while the family ate lunch, she said.

These cases highlight the complexities involved in border control. It may also highlight what can happen to immigrants who make their way into the States and may have paid for their one-way trip with living as indentured servants to those who brought them here. These are all hidden costs of the ongoing failure to secure the borders and not having a workable immigration policy.