Escape from Domestic Servitude

Parents will do anything for their children. They will protect them at all costs, make difficult decisions, and work their fingers to the bone to provide for their families. It is for this very reason that desperate parents are easy targets for traffickers promising stability and prosperity.

Beatrice Fernando of Sri Lanka knows this as well as anyone. After getting divorced at 23, Fernando was desperately looking for a way to provide for her three-year-old son. When she found a local agency calling for housemaids, she responded to the job despite it requiring her to move to Lebanon. She said goodbye to her son with the hope of giving him a better life.  

When she and the other recruits made it to the job agent's office, their passports were taken away, and they were examined "as if they were vacuum cleaners." Fernando was sold to a wealthy woman and taken away to clean her mansion. She cleaned for at least 20 hours a day, had to scrounge through the trash for her meals, and endured physical abuse as she tried to escape. Faced with locked doors and no contact with the outside world, Fernando escaped only by climbing off the home's fourth-floor balcony. She recovered in the hospital and later moved to the United States. 

To read her full story, click here.