The promise of a two-week catering job turned into two years of modern-day slavery for an African woman, a lawsuit filed this week in U.S. District Court alleges.
Thembi Dlamini, 37, is suing a local pastor and his wife for monetary damages for luring her to Georgia from her home in Swaziland in 2005 to cater their son’s wedding.
But the wedding was a ruse. Juna Babb and Michael J. Babb took away Dlamini’s passport, kept her in their Ellenwood home and forced her to work for them for free until 2007, according to the lawsuit.
The Babbs pleaded guilty to human trafficking charges involving Dlamini as the victim. Last April, Juna Babb was sentenced to two years in federal prison. Michael Babb received a six-month sentence.
At the time of their pleas, U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said, “This case reminds us that modern day slavery is occurring in our communities. This young woman believed that she was traveling to the United States for a brief visit to help with a wedding. Instead, she was forced to work for the defendants for more than two years. It is especially disturbing that the victim was exploited by a minister and his wife.”
The couple was ordered to pay Dlamini $25,000 in restitution. Her lawyer says she’s only received a small fraction of that and deserves much more.
“She virtually worked 20 hours a day,” said Audra A. Dial, Dlamini’s attorney and a partner in the law firm Kilpatrick Townsend. “We want to get her the fair value of all the work she performed … probably hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
According to the lawsuit suit, the couple forced Dlamini to take care of their grandson every day, to clean, cook and keep up their lawn. She also was forced to work at Michael Babb’s construction company.
This isn’t an isolated case in Georgia, though it was one of the first to shine the spotlight on the problem of human trafficking. Last year, a Nigerian citizen in Atlanta was convicted for trafficking women from Nigeria to work as nannies.
A new law went into effect July 1 to discourage human trafficking and to provide greater protections to people subjected to such offenses.
Dlamini lives in the United States.
She reunited with the fiance from whom she was separated when those two weeks turned into two years, and they married, Dial said. Now, she said, Dlamini is just trying to move on with her life.
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