How I Ended Up As A Modern-day Slave In The Middle Of Nyc

Living in a cramped concrete house in the heart of Liberia’s sweltering capital, 8-year-old Famatta Massalay always dreamed of seeing snow.

One day, her mother told her she was about to get her chance.

But first, “we have to play a game,” Massalay’s mother said.

The mom taught the girl how to write a name that wasn’t hers and to tell authorities she was 10, not 8. Then she took her daughter to the immigration office in Monrovia to get a visa.

Soon after, on a stifling January afternoon in 1978, Massalay set off for JFK Airport for what she was told would be the adventure of a lifetime — the chance to see New York City blanketed in a perfect swirl of white.



The child wore a freshly sewn bell-bottom pantsuit and no coat and carried a small suitcase as she kissed her parents goodbye and waved to them from the stairs leading to the plane.

“I’ll see you tomorrow!” Massalay recalls telling them, confused by the tears pouring down her father’s face.

It was the last time she ever saw them.

Shortly after her arrival in New York City, the girl’s exciting journey became a waking nightmare. Massalay learned she had been sold into the modern-day slave trade as a “house girl.” She would be trapped in domestic servitude for the next six years — cooking, cleaning and caring for strangers while being beaten, forced to sleep in a bathtub and raped, giving birth on the day she celebrated her 14th birthday.

Massalay believes her parents were duped into paying a family to take her to the US, thinking their daughter would be provided safety and an education they could never give her.

It turned out the other family was part of a labor-trafficking network.

“I remember spending hours and days crying, just praying, ‘God, come get me. When are you going to come get me?’ ” Massalay told The Post.

Now, 40 years later, the dark clouds behind her eyes are nearly impossible to discern. Massalay is of one of the city Department of Education’s brightest stars, starting her 23rd year with the agency. She has worked as a substance abuse counselor and high school teacher in Brooklyn, this year teaching history and English at the Academy for College Preparation and Career Exploration in East Flatbush.

She says she wants to share her story to raise awareness about modern-day slavery. There are about 14.2 million people currently trapped in forced labor across the globe, with hundreds in New York, according to the Polaris Project, a nonprofit that runs a national hotline for trafficking victims with assistance from the federal government.

Massalay also has another, equally important message — hope.

“I tell my students all the time, when you learn something, you have to teach someone else what you learn — you have to always pay it forward because that’s what’s going to propel this world to evolve,” said Massalay, 48.

“There is a kid, just like me, in this city right now, and that kid needs to know . . . ‘You don’t have to take this. And we can give you information to leave today.’ ”

Massalay says her saga began when her mother, Selena, a teacher at a Monrovia primary school, was persuaded by the facility’s headmistress to send her daughter to America to live with her relatives to give her a US education.

Massalay said she believes the headmistress and her family were in on the human-trafficking scheme — and they had an easy target in her mother.

Civil war was coming to Liberia, and within a decade, the West African nation would be ravaged by unthinkable atrocities — child soldiers as young as 10 raping and killing relatives and drinking the blood of enemy kids straight from their ripped-out hearts.

“Political unrest was brewing,” Massalay said. “My dad was a police officer, and my mom was a teacher. Those are the people they come for first.

“[My mother’s] hopes were that my life would not be the desperateness that existed for young women in Liberia at that time,” she said. “The philosophy was, I’d come to America, obtain an education, evolve into a good person with a decent life and come back.”

But when Massalay stepped off the plane in Queens, disappointment hit her as fast as the fierce air cut through her flimsy blazer.

There was snow, but instead of fluffy powder, it was dirty mounds of icy muck. Massalay was picked up by a female relative of the headmistress and brought to a row house in Flatbush.

Initially, the woman appeared harmless. But the next day, she discovered Massalay, a little girl alone in a strange land, had wet the bed — and severely beat her for the innocent infraction.

“She told me right then and there that since I’m a ‘pee pot,’ I’m going to sleep in the bathtub,” said Massalay, who by then was going by the new name she was given, Musu Doherty. “I think that was the first time I felt dehumanized, and I didn’t even know what dehumanized meant. I just felt like I wasn’t a person, and I wanted so badly to go home.’’

That bathtub would be Massalay’s bed for the next few years — and only the beginning of the abuse she endured.

The 8-year-old was forced to cook, clean and care for the woman’s three children — 2-year-old twins and a 9-year-old boy. Massalay was not allowed to go to school, and if she did something wrong, she was beaten and sometimes not allowed to eat.

“You never knew where it was coming from. Maybe I took too long to respond to a question, maybe I burned the rice or didn’t wash the clothes well or didn’t clean something,” Massalay recalled.

She said she was passed around to homes in Brooklyn and Queens, where other relatives of the headmistress lived, to work for them, too.

Massalay traveled with her few belongings stuffed in a trash bag, continuing to be tortured, physically and emotionally, nearly daily.


Meanwhile, her documents were locked away in a drawer, and phone calls were forbidden.

She had only one interaction with her family in Liberia in this time — a phone call from her father when she was about 11, Massalay said. She later learned the call came only after her dad put a gun to a female trafficker’s head and demanded she call his daughter.

“I said I wanted to go home . . . and I was so scared,” Massalay recalled. “He said, ‘We’re going to get you home’ . . . But then it never happened.

“I remember I used to think, ‘I’m going to . . . run away,’ but then I kept saying, ‘Where am I going to go?’”

At one of the homes in Brooklyn, another trafficked Liberian girl begged Massalay to escape with her. But Massalay thought she would be worse off on the city’s streets, then rife with crime and violence.

“I knew the streets had nothing for me . . . I don’t know anybody. I don’t have any friends. I don’t even know any phone numbers,” Massalay said. “I don’t know how to get to Liberia. I know I need to get on a plane, but I have no money . . . I wasn’t an adult, I was a kid. I knew kids have no power, so let me just stay here.”

Massalay was allowed to attend school after age 10, but it offered little respite. She was relentlessly bullied for her accent, traditional African clothing and high grades. While attending Cunningham Junior High School in predominantly white Sheepshead Bay, she said, she was “chased every day” to and from the train “with bats and chains” and told, “Go home, n—-r.”

At 13, Massalay was raped and impregnated by a teen who lived next door, she said. He rang her bell when she was home alone.

“He kept saying how he needed to talk to me . . . He just pushed his way in and just forced himself on me. It was like he had been given a drug or something,” Massalay said. “I still don’t understand it . . . and I thought if I just pretended it didn’t happen, then it didn’t happen . . . I didn’t say anything to anybody. [But] it never went away. It just never went away.”

When one of her traffickers found out she was pregnant, Massalay said, the woman beat her.

“She said, ‘What did you do to yourself?’ ” Massalay said. “I explained to her what happened. She wouldn’t believe me. She told me I was a slut, a whore, a liar.”

The trafficker took Massalay to get an abortion, but the teen was in her second trimester, and the doctor refused. The trafficker then told Massalay she could stay in the home and continue to serve her as long as she put the baby up for adoption.

That’s when Massalay says she “finally snapped.”

“For the first time, I just made the decision in my head, ‘This is it. I can’t do this anymore . . . I have to become my own defender because I don’t have one,’” she said.

On Massalay’s 14th birthday, she gave birth to her daughter, Christina, and the two entered the city’s foster-care system together.

The move was life-changing.

“[It] put me in a position for my status in this country to become legalized, so the bad really manifested to a blessing,” Massalay said.

“I always tell Christina, ‘You saved my life because, by you being born, that forced me to stand up for you. I didn’t even know how to stand up for myself, but I knew that I wasn’t going to allow the life that I had to be your life.’”

As Massalay told her story, her voice was mostly stoic and measured, as if she were recounting a bad dream a friend told her about — not her own account of horrific abuse and enslavement.

Her emotions showed only when she brought up her mother, particularly the time when Amnesty International arranged a phone call between the two 15 years after Massalay was trafficked. By this time, Massalay’s father, Jacob, had died.

“The first and last conversation I had with my mother was not my best day as a human being. I don’t think I’ve ever been mean to anyone except for that time,” Massalay said.

“I was 23 years old and full of anger . . . My words were very, very harsh. Even when she was crying, I kept [pushing] . . . because I blamed her . . . [She put me] in this strange country, these people were psychologically torturing me, they’re calling me all kinds of names, I’m getting beat, some days I don’t get to eat.”

Massalay said she wanted her mother to answer one question: “All these years, how could you sleep?”

She said her mother could only say she prayed for her constantly. Massalay said she never got to grill her mother on how much she knew about her childhood in the US, but she now believes her parents were good people who got duped.

The two never spoke again.

Massalay’s mother died, and her daughter said it took years for her to fully forgive her and her father. In 2013, Massalay went to Liberia for the first time since she was 8. She went to visit her parents’ graves and find some measure of peace.


“There were a lot of losses. My parents lost me. I lost them. I lost my innocence, my family was ripped apart,” Massalay said.

In her parents’ memory, Massalay has started The Jacob and Selena Project, a nonprofit named after her mother and father that aims to educate Liberian families on trafficking and provide them with basic needs so they won’t be faced with the tough decisions her parents faced.

As a teacher, Massalay has used her story to help students, including a girl she urged to go to her parents for help after getting pregnant.

Massalay has been honored with dozens of awards, including for being an outstanding mentor to other teachers and for helping students.

But she says the accolades aren’t what push her to continue spreading awareness. It’s her own memories of abandonment, the still-festering wounds of a broken family and the realities of a childhood lost.

“As recent as last year, I had a co-worker from Nigeria [in the car],” she said, “and I told her a little synopsis of my story, and she said, ‘Why do you call that trafficking? My family’s been doing that for years . . . My mother brings girls from Nigeria, their family gives my mother money, and they help us, they cook, they clean.’ ”

Massalay pulled the car over.

“She said, ‘That’s not trafficking.’ I said, ‘Yes it is. Look up the definition,’ ” Massalay recalled. “ ‘You’re two master’s in, woman. You’ve been teaching for eight years-plus. If you don’t know this, who will?’”


https://nypost.com/2018/10/01/how-i-ended-up-as-a-modern-day-slave-in-the-middle-of-nyc/

Horrific story. How could the parents live with themselves? Speechless. Sadly this type of thing is still going on.

This really hurt my heart. I'll never understand how people can be so cruel to children.

Unspeakable tragedy. I really wonder what her parents were thinking, and what kind of situation they were in

I mean, the article says that war was coming and her parents professions put them directly in the crosshairs. I believe they thought they were saving their child...who could imagine such cruelty? The father putting a gun to the head of another trafficker to speak with his baby...I just don't think they knew. I would have put that Nigerian lady with 2 masters degrees talking about her family does the same and it's not trafficking out of my car and on the curb. I will never even understand people who are comfortable with wanting and expecting people to wait on them hand and foot. I hope they all suffer their worst nightmares for doing this to people, especially to babies.

And things aren't any better there right now. It's so horrifying.

WOW. That felt so heart-wrenchingly raw and too close to home.

“As recent as last year, I had a co-worker from Nigeria [in the car],” she said, “and I told her a little synopsis of my story, and she said, ‘Why do you call that trafficking? My family’s been doing that for years . . . My mother brings girls from Nigeria, their family gives my mother money, and they help us, they cook, they clean.’ ”

Massalay pulled the car over.

“She said, ‘That’s not trafficking.’ I said, ‘Yes it is. Look up the definition,’ ” Massalay recalled. “ ‘You’re two master’s in, woman. You’ve been teaching for eight years-plus. If you don’t know this, who will?’”

The whole story is horrific but this specific part is loaded with so much wrong and crazy that I don't have the energy to usher in AA vs Africa week over it. I'm just going to leave it with something I've heard a wise woman say repeatedly: Who was at the gate?

Crackers Phinn said:

“As recent as last year, I had a co-worker from Nigeria [in the car],” she said, “and I told her a little synopsis of my story, and she said, ‘Why do you call that trafficking? My family’s been doing that for years . . . My mother brings girls from Nigeria, their family gives my mother money, and they help us, they cook, they clean.’ ”

Massalay pulled the car over.

“She said, ‘That’s not trafficking.’ I said, ‘Yes it is. Look up the definition,’ ” Massalay recalled. “ ‘You’re two master’s in, woman. You’ve been teaching for eight years-plus. If you don’t know this, who will?’”

The whole story is horrific but this specific part is loaded with so much wrong and crazy that I don't have the energy to usher in AA vs Africa week over it. I'm just going to leave it with something I've heard a wise woman say repeatedly: Who was at the gate?
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Yeah, I had to walk away from that, too. Not without mentally having this convo with Nigerian friends and wondering how they viewed this. The fact that I had no definitive answer was painful. The only thing I can chalk it up to is that many of those who are not descended from slaves are blessed to not carry the scars of our ancestors who were. My folks came out of Mississippi and we have a lot of baggage that some are just realizing and unraveling. Must be nice not to. No shade to anyone here.

I remember seeing an episode on SVU about this awhile back and wondering (halfway disbelieving --at least wanting to disbelieve) if this still was happening. I mean they showed all these kids in shackles waiting to be used as slaves for the wealthy. I just could not wrap my head around this existing in the US.

Between this human labor trafficking and child sex trafficking... this is thoroughly horrifying and heartbreaking and unacceptable. How is this still happening?!!

Good Lord...this poor woman..I'm glad that she is alive and thriving but what a horrible story.

Why is it hard for some people to understand that this is human trafficking? These aren't adults choosing to work for fair wages and being treated well, these are children being denied their humanity? Sigh. Sometimes we have to overcome tradition, just because something has been done for years doesn't make it right.

ETA: Doesn't surprise me about Sheepshead Bay...those folks. Same for Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst.

Sending your kids to 'Merica for an education is a goal of many non-Americans. My cousin was sent to live with my parents while he completed college. HE was waited on hand and foot by my Mama! She would never have dreamed to ask him to do anything. She washed his clothes cooked his meals etc. She treated him like she would treat ME! That's how we do.
I dont get the whole treating others like slaves...like we been there done that ya know?

Crackers Phinn said:

My mother brings girls from Nigeria, their family gives my mother money, and they help us, they cook, they clean.’ ”

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I just read this part again. Why the heck are THEY PAYING YOU to work their children to death in your home?!! What services are you providing these children while you're taking money from their parents? I would have dropped that heifer off at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or the nearest ICE office. No you will not sit here "educated"and try to excuse this nonsense. Get out of my sight. There is something about black folks who willingly treat black folks like racists would that turns my freaking stomach. I have zero tolerance for it and never will.

Shula said:

Yeah, I had to walk away from that, too. Not without mentally having this convo with Nigerian friends and wondering how they viewed this. The fact that I had no definitive answer was painful. The only thing I can chalk it up to is that many of those who are not descended from slaves are blessed to not carry the scars of our ancestors who were. My folks came out of Mississippi and we have a lot of baggage that some are just realizing and unraveling. Must be nice not to. No shade to anyone here.

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Hmm. This practice of children being sent to live with better off families and having to do housework to earn their keep is common throughout the developing world, including in the Western Hemisphere in other countries with strong slave histories. My mom and aunt were sent from their village to live with a relative in town to go to high school. They were expected to do chores. Clearly nothing on the level of what was described here.

What the Nigerian person mentioned, also happens with people from around the world from developing areas. Lots of recent immigrant/first gen whites in my area bring young women over from Eastern Europe and provide a room and a stipend for caring for their children and home. A lot of ethnic groups do this. However I will note that it’s usually a grown person (liked 18-25) who does domestic chores and in btw that they try to get a degree to move on...Situations I’ve seen with kids are more so for the kid to just go to school, so this case is extreme and terrible.

Menina Preta said:

Hmm. This practice of children being sent to live with better off families and having to do housework to earn their keep is common throughout the developing world, including in the Western Hemisphere in other countries with strong slave histories. My mom and aunt were sent from their village to live with a relative in town to go to high school. They were expected to do chores. Clearly nothing on the level of what was described here.

What the Nigerian person mentioned, also happens with people from around the world from developing areas. Lots of recent immigrant/first gen whites in my area bring young women over from Eastern Europe and provide a room and a stipend for caring for their children and home. A lot of ethnic groups do this. However I will note that it’s usually a grown person (liked 18-25) who does domestic chores and in btw that they try to get a degree to move on...Situations I’ve seen with kids are more so for the kid to just go to school, so this case is extreme and terrible.

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I've heard of it and it sounds similar to a nanny position. However, I must say that almost every case I remember is exploitative of the servant. Passports taken away, less than ideal living conditions while the family lives well, spoken to and treated less than kindly. Can't eat with the family. On duty 18-20 hours of the day. Cooking, cleaning, caretaking of everyone and a lot of them never see their families again. Remember the story here about the Filipino lady? They let almost her whole family die off and decades had passed before she was allowed to go home after the death of the tyrant parents.

I still haven't figured out why the Nigerian lady admits the mother GAVE them money but the kids sounds like they are earning their keep? Which is it or am I missing something?

I have no problems with the situations your aunt and mother lived in because that sounds extremely normal but perhaps them being sent to relatives made it not the usual cruelty we hear of.

Shula said:

I've heard of it and it sounds similar to a nanny position. However, I must say that almost every case I remember is exploitative of the servant. Passports taken away, less than ideal living conditions while the family lives well, spoken to and treated less than kindly. Can't eat with the family. On duty 18-20 hours of the day. Cooking, cleaning, caretaking of everyone and a lot of them never see their families again. Remember the story here about the Filipino lady? They let almost her whole family die off and decades had passed before she was allowed to go home after the death of the tyrant parents.

I still haven't figured out why the Nigerian lady admits the mother GAVE them money but the kids sounds like they are earning their keep? Which is it or am I missing something?

I have no problems with the situations your aunt and mother lived in because that sounds extremely normal but perhaps them being sent to relatives made it not the usual cruelty we hear of.

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My mom said the relative treated her like ish making her do all the work bc she was the darker one and my aunt was the light one. Nothing to the point of denying her food or making her sleep in a tub, but she knew she was not the well liked one. These situations are sad. I’m just happy that I’m in the position to not have to send my kids away to get an education.

Menina Preta said:

My mom said the relative treated her like ish making her do all the work bc she was the darker one and my aunt was the light one. Nothing to the point of denying her food or making her sleep in a tub, but she knew she was not the well liked one. These situations are sad. I’m just happy that I’m in the position to not have to send my kids away to get an education.

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Sis, I seriously jerked back from the screen because I wasn't expecting that but yet somehow it is super believable. So sorry for your mom and I'm so happy that her sacrifice helped break the cycle and you are in a better position with your hard work you put in as well, to not have to continue this.

Some of our people make me so sad like deep in my bones. I don't know how else to describe it.

Shula said:

Sis, I seriously jerked back from the screen because I wasn't expecting that but yet somehow it is super believable. So sorry for your mom and I'm so happy that her sacrifice helped break the cycle and you are in a better position with your hard work you put in as well, to not have to continue this.

Some of our people make me so sad like deep in my bones. I don't know how else to describe it.

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Thanks lady. My mom is a tough cookie. She just shakes her head when talking about how ignorant that woman was. So many of our parents and other older relatives dealt with such BS, growing up poor and Black. Even with the political turmoil going on, I feel blessed to be alive at this time right now bc I didn’t have to go through that mess.

Menina Preta said:

Thanks lady. My mom is a tough cookie. She just shakes her head when talking about how ignorant that woman was. So many of our parents and other older relatives dealt with such BS, growing up poor and Black. Even with the political turmoil going on, I feel blessed to be alive at this time right now bc I didn’t have to go through that mess.

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The fact that it comes from US black folks in addition to the world's antiblackness is the stake in the heart for me. Add that to the stress and diet killing us, we stress us out too, sometimes.

Crackers Phinn said:

“As recent as last year, I had a co-worker from Nigeria [in the car],” she said, “and I told her a little synopsis of my story, and she said, ‘Why do you call that trafficking? My family’s been doing that for years . . . My mother brings girls from Nigeria, their family gives my mother money, and they help us, they cook, they clean.’ ”

Massalay pulled the car over.

“She said, ‘That’s not trafficking.’ I said, ‘Yes it is. Look up the definition,’ ” Massalay recalled. “ ‘You’re two master’s in, woman. You’ve been teaching for eight years-plus. If you don’t know this, who will?’”

The whole story is horrific but this specific part is loaded with so much wrong and crazy that I don't have the energy to usher in AA vs Africa week over it. I'm just going to leave it with something I've heard a wise woman say repeatedly: Who was at the gate?
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SIS!

It's so many of these stories. There was an article last year about an Asian woman (though she wasn't treated this badly), but all of these stories make me uncomfortable. Everyone tries to paint a better picture, oh they're older, oh we don't beat or rape them, oh we eventually let them leave...etc etc....it all makes me so uncomfortable. Folks holding passports, paying them pennies if at all, not giving their help time to themselves, days off, talking to them like spit......but hey we don't beat them so they're not slaves.

intellectualuva said:

SIS!

It's so many of these stories. There was an article last year about an Asian woman (though she wasn't treated this badly), but all of these stories make me uncomfortable. Everyone tries to paint a better picture, oh they're older, oh we don't beat or rape them, oh we eventually let them leave...etc etc....it all makes me so uncomfortable. Folks holding passports, paying them pennies if at all, not giving their help time to themselves, days off, talking to them like spit......but hey we don't beat them so they're not slaves.

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A whole lot of them people are lying. Because let's face it, who really is going to fess up to that? "Yeah girl, we was taking the parents money, keeping the kids out of school to wait on us hand and foot and if these lil fass tail girls caught our fathers, brothers, sons, uncles and husbands eye well, men go be men. Of course we beat them, how else are they going to learn to not leave streaks on the mirrors? "

I'm sure the lady who raised the woman in the article won't remember anything about making a child sleep in a bathtub for years after peeing the bed once....which means that bed was available, she just wasn't allowed to sleep in it.

Crackers Phinn said:

A whole lot of them people are lying. Because let's face it, who really is going to fess up to that?

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Yep, because the story about the Filipino lady was published upon the DEATH of the author and his parents were the culprits. He knew to die first.

When folks talk about abolishing ICE, they ahould read up on how much they do to combat trafficking. The DHS blue project is great.

I watched a speaker talk about being trafficked to San Diego, raped and beaten daily. When she couldn’t take it anymore and she was still a minor she killed her captor. She was arrested and served years in jail. Upon her release she was going to be deported for being here illegally and being a felon. It took years and pro bono work by amazing lawyers to stop her deportation and get her a green card.

Crackers Phinn said:

“As recent as last year, I had a co-worker from Nigeria [in the car],” she said, “and I told her a little synopsis of my story, and she said, ‘Why do you call that trafficking? My family’s been doing that for years . . . My mother brings girls from Nigeria, their family gives my mother money, and they help us, they cook, they clean.’ ”

Massalay pulled the car over.

“She said, ‘That’s not trafficking.’ I said, ‘Yes it is. Look up the definition,’ ” Massalay recalled. “ ‘You’re two master’s in, woman. You’ve been teaching for eight years-plus. If you don’t know this, who will?’”

The whole story is horrific but this specific part is loaded with so much wrong and crazy that I don't have the energy to usher in AA vs Africa week over it. I'm just going to leave it with something I've heard a wise woman say repeatedly: Who was at the gate?
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We had a thread years ago where some people on here were swearing up and down that this wasn't wrong bc thier fam was doing it. And thier family always treated the house boy/girl really well.

brg240 said:

We had a thread years ago where some people on here were swearing up and down that this want wrong bc thier fam was doubt it. And thier family always treated the house boy/girl really well.

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Yeah, I know and I didn’t believe it then either.

I was sent to live with my uncle in Boston. I ended up living in the basement with no heat during winter. I did all the chores after going to work. My uncle was an attorney and he made me sign a contract on which days I would do what. There was a spare room upstairs but I was not allowed to sleep in it. I was supposed to go to ATL but he convinced my Dad that I needed to be close to family and I didn't have to pay rent.

Every time I said something, he would pull out the contract. He lived in the boonies and I had to walk to work because there were no buses. They both worked from home and didn't want to pick me up from work 5 miles away. A job my aunt insisted that I had to get. My Aunt is white if that makes any difference.

Luckily I had papers and I moved out when I went to college a few months later. When I told my father, he was beyond upset. To this day I don't speak to him and his wife. My cousins were grown and gone by the time I got there. Family can be something else.

This same uncle got first class treatment from my Dad whenever he visited Kenya. He got a driver, cook, housekeeper etc the works for him and his wife. When it came to my brother and I, crickets......

okange76 said:

I was sent to live with my uncle in Boston. I ended up living in the basement with no heat during winter. I did all the chores after going to work. My uncle was an attorney and he made me sign a contract on which days I would do what. There was a spare room upstairs but I was not allowed to sleep in it. I was supposed to go to ATL but he convinced my Dad that I needed to be close to family and I didn't have to pay rent.

Every time I said something, he would pull out the contract. He lived in the boonies and I had to walk to work because there were no buses. They both worked from home and didn't want to pick me up from work 5 miles away. A job my aunt insisted that I had to get. My Aunt is white if that makes any difference.

Luckily I had papers and I moved out when I went to college a few months later. When I told my father, he was beyond upset. To this day I don't speak to him and his wife. My cousins were grown and gone by the time I got there. Family can be something else.

This same uncle got first class treatment from my Dad whenever he visited Kenya. He got a driver, cook, housekeeper etc the works for him and his wife. When it came to my brother and I, crickets......

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I'm so seriously sorry. That just literally made me nauseous, for real. My stomach is churning. I don't understand this pathological need to be ugly to anybody, much less your own blood. Did your father ever say anything or confront him over it?

ETA: I wish you could have recorded and found a way to get that joker disbarred. I sincerely hope he didn't work in the criminal justice system.

That story really brought tears to my eyes. There are so many tragic stories STILL happening... it hurts my heart. When I lived in Long Island, there was a story where a woman was found in some Indian people's home, in a normal neighborhood. She too was held up in slavery in that house for years. That was just in 2011/12.

I'm glad this woman got the fortitude to stand up for herself and her unborn baby at the time that she did, or else she might have been killed like so many others.