The Civil Rights Division led a long and difficult investigation resulting in a 22-count indictment against five defendants charged with subjecting workers to involuntary servitude in a garment factory in American Samoa. Specifically, the indictment charged that the defendants brought 250 Vietnamese, and Chinese nationals, mostly young women, to work as sewing machine operators in a Daewoosa garment factory. The victims, some of whom were held for up to two years, were forced to work through extreme food deprivation, beatings, and physical restraint. The victims were held in barracks on a guarded company compound, and were threatened with confiscation of their passports, deportation, economic bankruptcy, severe economic hardship to family members, false arrest, and a host of other consequences. One victim had an eye gouged out by a defendant who struck her with a jagged pipe in order to punish her for refusing to comply with the defendants’ orders.