Calif. woman gets 6-year term for forcing Peruvian migrant to work for no pay

Calif. woman sentenced in forced labor case

OAKLAND, Calif. — A woman convicted of luring a Peruvian to the United States with promises of job then confiscating her travel documents and forcing her to work for no pay was sentenced to six years in prison Wednesday.

Maribel de la Rosa Dann was found guilty of forced labor and related charges for keeping Zoraida Pena-Canal enslaved as a household servant from summer of 2006 to the spring of 2008. Dann, a real estate agent in the affluent suburb of Walnut Creek, was also ordered to serve three years of supervised released, and ordered to pay $123,740 in restitution for back wages not paid.

Pena-Canal has a civil case pending in which she is seeking to recover the costs of her labor, emotional distress and other damages.

The victim did not want to speak in court, but in a written statement she told others who might be enduring similar circumstances, “Do not be afraid and do not be ashamed. Seek help and fight for the justice you deserve.”

Attorneys and advocates said that while the public may be more familiar with human trafficking victims who are forced into prostitution, cases of forced labor like Pena-Canal’s are also widespread.

“This case accurately captures the face of human trafficking now, as we see it in contemporary society,” said Kathleen Kim, a professor at Loyola Law School specializing in human trafficking.

According to court testimony, Pena-Canal cared for Dann’s children and did other household chores from early morning to late at night without breaks, while sleeping on the living room floor and eating food rationed by her employer. She was not allowed contact with her family or access to news.

Dann’s attorney, Jerome Matthews, asked the judge to consider probation and community service in lieu of prison time, saying his client had to care for her young children.

“The care of her children is the primary animating principle of everything she stands accused of,” he said.

U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken dismissed his request, and ordered restitution to start as soon as possible, calling on the defendant to liquidate her assets to start giving Pena-Canal the money she is owed.

Dann apologized in court to Pena-Canal, saying, “It was never my intention that things turn out like this.”

Pena-Canal was able to escape when people in the neighborhood — a gardener and parents of children in the elementary school attended by Dann’s children — noticed she always appeared disheveled, wearing the same clothes, and upset. They contacted police and eventually La Raza Centro Legal, a San Francisco immigrants’ right nonprofit.

The defendant’s attorney asked for leniency, arguing that Dann’s treatment of Pena-Canal pales in comparison to other cases involving sex and cheap labor.

Kim said cases like Pena-Canal’s have been harder to prosecute because the coercion is psychological, not physical or legal.

But two years ago, an amendment to the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act — the first comprehensive federal law for prosecution of traffickers — clarified that threats to a person’s reputation, their family and other forms of psychological pressure also amount to coercion, Kim said.

The prison sentence in this case is also an important message to other victims, the public, and to law enforcement, said Cindy Liou, staff attorney with Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach, a San Francisco Bay Area organization that works with victims of human trafficking.

“We can’t do our work here if the public doesn’t recognize who might need assistance, what trafficking could look like in their communities,” she said.