An eye on modern slavery

By Jennifer Langston

Herald Writer

SEATTLE — Unlike many mail-order brides, Anastasia King had a broad support network — loving parents in Kyrgyzstan, a job at a restaurant and classmates at the University of Washington.

But even that didn’t save the woman — who married a Mountlake Terrace man twice her age for the chance to come to this country — from being murdered.

Other women brought to America as wives, maids or indentured prostitutes don’t even have those advantages, advocates say.

They may not know how to take a public bus, much less understand how to negotiate new immigration laws designed to protect them.

That’s why state Rep. Velma Veloria, D-Seattle, plans to introduce legislation in Olympia in January creating a task force to study the extent of illegal trafficking in women and children in Washington state. The legislation would also direct social service agencies to provide victims of illegal trafficking or sexual coercion with job support, social services and compensation.

There are no reliable statistics on how many foreign women are sold into slavery, lured here with false promises of good jobs or afraid to leave an abusive marriage for fear of deportation, Veloria said.

But several high-profile cases in recent years suggest there are problems: two murdered mail-order brides in the Seattle area and a Filipino woman brought illegally to this country to be the servant of a retired police officer.

Anastasia King, a music student from the former Soviet republic who married after placing her photo with an international matchmaking service, was found dead last year in a shallow grave outside Marysville.

Her husband, Indle King Jr., is awaiting trial on murder charges, and claims he is innocent. A former housemate who said he strangled Anastasia King with a necktie while King pinned her down pleaded guilty last month to second-degree murder.

"There were patterns we were seeing," Veloria said Saturday at a conference at the UW on illegal trafficking of women and children. "Those were just the publicized ones."

Anne Hennessy, a women’s counselor at the Snohomish County Jail, said she has seen at least four mail-order brides in the last year arrested on charges of domestic violence. Their husbands pressed charges against the women after the marriages soured, which puts them at risk for deportation, she said.

One woman said she was bought by her husband in her Kenyan village when she was in only 14 years old, Hennessy said Saturday.

"I was aghast that modern-day slavery of what she described was occurring," she said. "As a jail employee, it would be really good to have resources to refer these women to."

The number of businesses advertising foreign women as potential brides nearly doubled from 1994 to 1998, according to a study funded by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Whether new laws designed to protect victims of illegal trafficking would help foreign brides like Anastasia King who are trapped in unhappy or coercive marriages isn’t clear.

"That is the debate — is the mail-order bride business prohibited trafficking? The answer is sometimes," said Bernice Funk, a lawyer representing the parents of Anastasia King, who are fighting to remain in this country to be near their daughter’s grave.

Some marriages arranged through international matchmaking services turn out to be loving unions, critics acknowledge. But they argue the inherent imbalance of power makes the relationships ripe for abuse.

There’s often a large age difference; the women may not speak English; and they’re often completely ignorant of their rights under immigration laws, said Karen Gilbert, a Seattle lawyer who specializes in such cases.

Foreign women are rarely informed of a potential husband’s past marriages, history of domestic violence or criminal record.

"If there were a screening of these kinds of problems before a young woman was a victim of a crime, that would be helpful," Funk said. "But that may be too much to ask from Immigration and Naturalization."

Others said there’s a need to educate prospective mail-order brides in their native countries about the potential risks and their rights once they arrive in America.

Anastasia King’s mother said if they’d understood the magnitude of the problem, they never would have let their only daughter marry a stranger from America. She and her husband, both music teachers in elementary schools, were just naive, she said.

"What happened with our daughter — it’s due to our childlike, faithful perception of the world," Alevtina Solovieva said through a translator Saturday. "We always believed in the best character of Anastasia’s husband."

You can call Herald Writer Jennifer Langston at 425-339-3452

or send e-mail to langston@heraldnet.com.

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