Florida slavers are found guilty

A Florida jury convicted a mother and daughter charged with enslaving and abusing a Haitian girl for six years before she escaped to tell her story. Evelyn Theodore, 74, and Maude Paulin, 52, now face seven to 10 years in prison for violating Simone Celestin’s 13th Amendment right to be free from slavery and for forcing her to work for them. Celestin, now 22, said that she was 5 years old when she was stolen from her mother and grandmother in a remote mountain village in Haiti and forced to pretend she was an orphan at an orphanage that Theodore operated with her husband. When Celestin was 14, she was taken to the United States on a work visa and, for the next six years, slaved away for 15-hour days with no pay. In 2005 – after years of beatings, no schooling, sleeping on the floor, bathing with a hose and having too little to eat or to wear – Celestin escaped. Theodore and Paulin used their hands, shoes, curling irons and other objects to administer their whippings, Celestin said. Testifying in court Wednesday, Celestin said that she often considered suicide. What kind of sentence do you think is fair?