By Susanna Ray
Herald Writer
OLYMPIA — Inspired in part by the death of a Mountlake Terrace mail-order bride, state legislators want to ensure that other foreign mail-order brides know more about their prospective husbands before they marry them and move to Washington.
Several bills considered Tuesday attempt to shed light on the mail-order bride industry, which some maligned as a form of human trafficking.
"We are the first state in the nation to address this problem legislatively," said Rep. Velma Veloria, D-Seattle. "It is the first step toward ending the modern day form of slavery."
Playing a central role in the debate Tuesday was the death of Anastasia King, a 20-year-old mail-order bride from Kyrgyzstan. Her husband, 40-year-old Indle King Jr., is on trial for her murder.
Two of the bills, HB 2667 and SB 6412, would require international matchmaking services to show women in other countries the results of criminal background checks and marital histories, in the woman’s native language, of any Washington state men interested in them. The men would have to pay for the Washington State Patrol background checks themselves. If the companies didn’t comply, they could be charged under the Consumer Protection Act.
A task force would be created under two other bills, HB 2381 and SB 6407, to study the scope of human trafficking in Washington and recommend how best to assist the victims. The task force would serve without compensation, keeping costs down to about $25,000 — an important issue in this tight budget year. The bills would also expand the Crime Victims Compensation Act so victims of trafficking could be eligible for medical and mental health treatment.
These bills would be the first such state laws in the country, said Heather Morton of the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures.
Maryland legislators failed to get a similar task force bill through last year.
Supporters of the Washington bills said they don’t know for sure if human trafficking is more of an issue here than in than in other states. But the local waterways and metropolitan areas and proximity to an international border are exactly what traffickers look for, said Rani Hong of Olympia, who said she was sold by a family friend as a child in her native India.
"I believe that the mail-order bride industry is a subset of the trafficking industry," said Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle. She quickly added that some men use the service legitimately to seek bona fide mates.
Most mail-order brides come from the Philippines, but there has been a recent increase in those from the former Soviet Union, she said. They are mostly poor, young women who want to come to the United States to improve their lives.
"Unfortunately, they frequently fall prey to individuals who might have a more unsavory intent," she testified Tuesday. Supporters told stories of abuse and forced prostitution or servitude.
Sen. Jeri Costa, D-Marysville, began working on the issue with Veloria and Kohl-Welles after the 1995 murder of foreign bride Susana Blackwell.
Blackwell’s husband shot and killed her along with her unborn baby and two friends at the King County Courthouse after she filed divorce papers.
When Anastasia King’s strangled body was found in a shallow grave in Costa’s hometown in December 2000, Costa decided legislative action was needed and organized a luncheon in Olympia to get the process rolling.
Costa and others said the only obstacles they see to getting the bills passed is time, since it’s a short, 60-day session this year. Committee members expressed support for the legislation, and no one testified against them at Tuesday’s public hearings.
But so far, the matchmaking industry has been unaware of lawmakers’ plans.
The president of one of the biggest mail-order bride companies in the country responded with shock when told of the proposal to require background checks for would-be grooms.
"I lived in Russia for more than a year, and I’ve never seen anything like that. And we think we’re the land of the free," said John Adams, president of A Foreign Affair based in Phoenix, Ariz.
Adams, who is also a customer of his company, having been married to a Russian woman for three years, said he’d fly out to Olympia to testify against the bill at its next hearing in the House, if it gets that far.
"These are adults, working, living and communicating in the real adult world of life, love and relationships, and I’m not sure those people would appreciate the heavy finger of government coming into their lives," said the company’s co-owner, Ron Redburn.
Men pay $95 a month to A Foreign Affair for access to a database of 20,000 women from all around the world. But all the company does is provide contact information, Redburn said. It doesn’t regulate whether the users connect or not.
"We really have no idea of who’s contacting who," he said, which would make it impossible to comply with a law requiring they provide women with background check information on Washington men.
So if the bill gets through, he said, "I think I would just stop doing business in Washington."
It’s not yet clear that providing background information to prospective brides would change the outcomes, as bill sponsors are hoping.
"Had Anastasia King known that she was the second mail-order bride for Indle King, she may have thought twice," Veloria said during testimony in one of the hearings.
But correspondence between the couple before they married shows that Indle King had indeed told his bride-to-be about his previous marriage to another Russian woman. In addition, he had no prior felony convictions.
Herald writer Scott North contributed to this report.
You can call Herald Writer Susanna Ray at 360-586-3803 or send e-mail to ray@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
