Human Trafficking Case Study 1: Marianna

Read the case study that follows. Then, click on the image to take the quiz about Marianna.

Marianna was very poor with very few, if any, options in her home country. She was raising two young children by herself in Mexico and trying to pay off her father's medical bills when she saw a newspaper ad for an agency that arranged jobs in Canada. They told her that, for $3,000, they could arrange for her to get a job in Vancouver at a cardboard-box factory for $10 an hour — three times as much money as she could earn at home.

Marianna borrowed money to pay the $3,000 agency fee, and an extra $1,000 for her plane ticket to B.C.

When Marianna arrived in Vancouver, a man picked her up at the airport and brought her to a house in the suburbs, where a woman took her passport for "safekeeping". The woman then told her that the factory job had not come through, and instead she would be working in the lab downstairs, which, Marianna discovered, produced crystal methamphetamine and other illegal drugs.

Everyone but Marianna knew that she had been tricked to come to Canada to work at the illegal drug lab, not a factory. Everyone also knew what would happen to her if she refused to do the work. Marianna refused at first, but had no other options to pay her bills or support her family. She felt scared and trapped.

Marianna did get paid and fed, but had to work very long hours and sleep in a room next to the lab with 10 other men and women. Marianna grew very concerned that she would be seen as a criminal for working in an illegal drug lab. When Marianna asked for her passport back because she wanted to leave, the woman told her no, she knew too much, and if she tried to leave, they would kill her.

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