A Walnut Creek woman is facing up to 20 years in prison for luring a Peruvian woman to the United States with promises of a job, then confiscating her travel documents and forcing her to work for no pay.
Maribel de la Rosa Dann is scheduled for sentencing Wednesday. She's been convicted of forced labor and related charges in connection to her treatment of Zoraida Pena-Canal.
Attorneys and advocates say that while the public may be more familiar with human trafficking victims who are forced into prostitution, cases of forced labor like Pena-Canal's are at least as widespread.
Numbers are hard to come by, but a study by UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center estimated there were nearly 20,000 victims of forced labor in the United States over a five-year period. Most were in California, Florida, New York and Texas.
The Associated Press