African Man Convicted Of Slavery For Keeping 4 Boys Captive In Mich.

Slavery in America? Yup, you read that right, slavery is still on and poppin’ in Michigan although authorities are trying their best to crack down on human trafficking. A West African man living in the state was actually convicted this week for enslaving and abusing four young men from his native Togo this week.

Via TheGrio:

On Tuesday, a federal jury convicted a former janitor at the University of Michigan of enslaving and abusing four West African boys. He held the boys in his home for five years and pretended that they were his own children.

Jean-Claude Kodjo Toviave, a native of the West African nation of Togo, could face up to 20 years in prison after being convicted on four counts of forced labor. Toviave, 42, was originally arrested in May 2011 after three of the boys reported the abuse to counselors at a middle school.

Toviave, whose sentencing is set for Feb. 6, smuggled the four boys into the country from Togo by using fake passports with false names and birth dates. Claiming the boys were his own biological children, he went as far as enrolling the three youngest – ages 21, 20, and 15 – in a public middle school.

During the trial, the boys testified that Toviave regularly beat them with broomsticks, a toilet plunger, sticks, ice scrapers, and cell phone chargers if they failed to obey orders to do their house chores – which included cooking, housecleaning, ironing his suits, shining his shoes, washing and vacuuming his car, and cleaning one of his friends’ houses.

Toviave also starved and sleep-deprived them as punishment. In February, Toviave pled guilty to mail fraud and harboring illegal aliens in connection with bringing the four boys to the United States.

Human trafficking, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, ranks just behind drug trafficking for most profitable criminal industries, with children accounting for half of all victims. Michigan, specifically Metro Detroit, has become one of the prime areas for human trafficking.

The state instituted its first human trafficking laws in 2006 and Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette expanded them in 2011. The changes included stiffer penalties for sex trafficking, involving minors in sex acts, and forced enslavement.

“In Michigan, we have seen victims in the Upper Peninsula, in Detroit, and in rural areas,” said Bridgette Carr, an Assistant Professor of Law and Director of the Human Trafficking Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School. “We haven’t found a community yet that we haven’t seen a victim come from.”

“So, what I often tell people is: ‘Find a community that doesn’t have a drug problem, and I can talk about perhaps your community doesn’t have a human trafficking problem.’ That’s how prevalent it is.”

That isht cray! We gotta ask how a 21-year-old and 20-year-old got away with going to middle school. Shouldn’t somebody have noticed they were big as hell for some so called tweens?

Oh and is 20 years a good enough payment for what he did to these four men’s lives???