Defendants Barbara Coleman-Blackwell and her husband, Kenneth Blackwell, natives of Ghana, were accused of conspiring to smuggle a woman M.O. from Ghana into the United States to work as an unpaid domestic servant and nanny for their child. Coleman-Blackwell, an accountant, has a 6-year-old daughter and a 2year-old son. Coleman-Blackwell came to the U.S. from Ghana as a teenager, obtained college degrees in the U.S. and married Blackwell, a U.S. citizen.
Grace Coleman, Coleman-Blackwell’s mother, former Deputy Minister of Finance and who was at the time the Member of Parliament (MP) for Effiduase-Asokore, in the Ashanti Region brought the woman into the United States under false pretences, claiming that the victim was her staff assistant and needed to accompany her to meetings at the State Department. Grace Coleman instead delivered the victim to Coleman-Blackwell for use as a servant. The defendants isolated her, confiscated her passport, and repeatedly threatened her in order to keep her working in their home while also performing baby-sitting services for neighbours.
The victim provided around-the-clock care for the defendants' child; cooked the family's meals; cleaned the home; did the laundry; and, at Coleman-Blackwell's insistence, performed such duties as removing Coleman-Blackwell's shoes at the end of the work day; cleaning between Coleman-Blackwell’s toes; cleaning up Coleman-Blackwell's vomit; and bringing Coleman-Blackwell a bowl of water at meal time to wash her hands.
After a three-week trial in June 2003, Barbara Coleman-Blackwell and her husband Kenneth Blackwell were convicted of conspiring to smuggle a woman from Ghana into the United States to work as an unpaid domestic servant and nanny for their child.
On January 8, 2004, U.S. District Judge Alexander Williams Jr. sentenced Barbara Coleman-Blackwell, 33, to five years and three months in federal prison for bringing a Ghanaian woman to the United States illegally and impressing her to serve as a nanny and domestic servant seven days a week without pay.
After a two-week jury trial, Ms. Coleman-Blackwell was convicted of forced labour, harbouring an illegal alien for financial gain and hiding the passport of M.O., 44.
M.O. testified that she was abused from February 2000 when she was brought to the U.S., until 2001, when she fled. Because Coleman-Blackwell is a permanent legal resident and has been convicted of a felony, she will be deported once she completes serving her sentence.
Kenneth Blackwell, 37, the husband of Coleman-Blackwell, was convicted of conspiracy and harbouring an illegal alien for financial gain. Judge Williams sentenced him to six months of home detention and three years' probation. Judge Williams found the evidence showed that Barbara Coleman-Blackwell was more culpable than Kenneth Blackwell.
Grace Coleman along with her daughter and son in-law Kenneth Blackwell, were indicted on October 16, 2002 by a federal grand jury in Greenbelt, Maryland, for violating a federal law by fraudulently carrying M.O. to the US and using her as a domestic servant in the couple's Takoma Park, Maryland home for a period of approximately 17 months.
The indictment alleged that in February 2000, Grace Coleman with the complicity of Barbara Coleman-Blackwell fraudulently obtained an American visa for M.O. by knowingly submitting a visa application with false information and made a false representation to an official at the US Embassy in Accra.
According to the indictment when M.O. arrived in the US, Grace Coleman took her passport, including her visa and her daughter Barbara Coleman-Blackwell hid it in an effort to prevent M.O. from leaving their home.
The indictment further alleged that Coleman and her daughter obtained M.O. 's labour and services by threatening her with deportation to and imprisonment in Ghana. Although it is not clear whether her indictment was an embarrassment to the government, Grace Coleman was dropped from President Kufuor's team during a recent cabinet reshuffle a few months after her indictment was announced.
Grace Coleman, has never faced trial because she returned to Ghana and has not been extradited, despite a request presented to the Government of Ghana by the Department of Justice.
United States District Court in Maryland
U.S. Department of Justice: “Report on Activities to Combat Human Trafficking” Fiscal Years 2001-2005, Appendix Human Trafficking cases p.77:
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/crim/trafficking_report_2006.pdf
Lexis Nexis:
Ruben Castaneda, Md. Woman Gets Five Years for Enslavement, Washington Post, Janurary. 9, 2004, at B3, col. 2.
Africa News, January 12, 2004
The couple's convictions are believed to be the first under laws Congress passed in 2000 to combat trafficking immigrants for the purpose of exploiting their labour.
Since 2001, the Justice Department has started 200 investigations into human trafficking and prosecuted more than 100 defendants. In 1999 and 2000, federal prosecutors started about 80 such investigations and prosecuted 25 defendants. Since 2000, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office has convicted persons in five cases of illegal domestic servitude.