We have two reviews in this edition of the newsletter, Sex Slaves and Serfs: The Dynamics of Human Trafficking in a Small Florida Town by Erin Heil and Understanding Parricide: When Sons and Daughters Kill Parents by Kathleen Heide.
Heil, Erin C. 2012. Sex Slaves and Serfs: The Dynamics of Human Trafficking in a Small Florida Town. Boulder, CO: First Forum Press.
Reviewer: Jason Chatman, Graduate Student, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
Dr. Erin Heil’s ethnography, ex Slaves and Serfs: The Dynamics of Human Trafficking in a Small Florida Town, is an account of both labor and sex trafficking in Immokalee, Florida. Heil introduces the reader to the players and social forces at work surrounding the business of trading in human beings. Heil suggests that human trafficking is not a fringe or extreme human condition as frequently perceived, but one that can be encountered in any major city or small town. Her methodology involves two years of interviews with and observations of both law enforcement and trafficking victims. Sex Slaves and Serfs is organized into 6 chapters, beginning with a foundational introduction that is followed by in-depth analyses of agricultural and sex workers in chapters two and three, law enforcement and community action towards trafficking in chapters 4 and 5, and concluding in chapter six with a call to action.
Chapters 2 & 3 of the book focus on the victims of human trafficking. The reader is first introduced to Immokalee Florida, a seemingly inconspicuous agricultural town in southern Florida. Heil quickly takes the reader behind the bland veneer of Immokalee and introduces the migrant field workers hidden in plain sight throughout Immokalee in conditions she describes as synonymous with slavery. Chapter 2 provides a close look at the demographics of individuals forced to live as slaves, such as their countries of origin, age, sex, and socioeconomic status. Heil also describes the associated stereotypes and racism she observed in Immokalee. A brief historical account draws distinctions between this modern day agricultural slavery and the enslavement of Africans in the South prior to the civil war. Heil discusses systems of power using Domhoff’s Ideal Model, discussing both economic and political types of power. A detailed discussion of the trafficker-induced constraints that maintain agricultural workers in perpetual slavery is concentrated on debt bondage, as well as physical and psychological abuses. The reader is brought to understand how debt is used to keep agricultural workers under control and enslaved with no hope of escape. Threats of violence against themselves and their families back in their country of origin combine with crushing debt and a persistent threat of deportation to keep agricultural slave laborers docile and reluctant to seek assistance from law enforcement or advocacy groups.
Chapter 3 moves the sociological lens from the workers in the fields to the sex slaves in brothels, clubs, and private residences. Although there are typically gender differences between victims of sex slavery and the farm laborers, their origin stories are remarkably similar. Using the heartbreaking accounts from the victims themselves, Heil reveals how many of these young women are manipulated, lied to, and even sold by their families into the life of sexual slavery. The same methods of oppression and psychological imprisonment used on the farm laborers are employed on the sex slave workers. In addition to forced prostitution, these young girls and women are abused as targets of sexual aggression and experimentation by paying customers seeking to fulfill taboo sexual fantasies.
Chapters 4 & 5 detail the struggles of law enforcement, non-government organizations, and other community entities against human trafficking. Using quotes from the assistant US district attorney and specific case details, Heil reveals a unique struggle for the officials charged with battling the evils of human trafficking in the US legal system. Drawing upon multiple resources and testimonials, Heil expertly illustrates the various actors and forces at work within Immokalee that create an environment in which human trafficking flourishes despite efforts from law enforcement and concerned groups to curtail it. She identifies shortcomings in police departments around the country in their inability to reliably identify and combat human trafficking. Drawing upon lessons from Immokalee as a model for other communities, Heil identifies the need for communities around the country to emulate the practices of Immokalee law enforcement and social groups to foster relationships with the immigrant populations and provide training to legal actors in an effort to combat agricultural slave labor and sexual exploitation.
Heil concludes Sex Slaves and Serfs with a discussion of the changing political landscape and renewed pressure by some in the United States to combat illegal immigration. She illustrates how some political policies are weakening the fight against human trafficking and dismantling the relationships that make identifying and prosecuting human traffickers possible. The reader is given an update on the current situation in Immokalee, as well as the surrounding communities where much of Immokalee’s previous immigrant population has relocated to avoid immigration persecution by local law enforcement. Making a convincing argument that the blame for human trafficking lies one way or another with all of us, Heil explains why, despite its horrors, human trafficking persists and thrives in the United States.
Overall, Sex Slaves and Serfs is a powerful and richly detailed work contributing to the academic discourse on human trafficking. Heil has opened a window to provide a view into this shadow economy where victims are hidden in plain sight throughout the U.S. Applicable to many academic interests throughout criminal justice and sociological study, Dr. Heil’s Sex Slaves and Serfs could be used as a supplemental text in higher-level undergraduate or graduate level courses in Violence Against Women, Sex Trafficking, Human Trafficking, Gender and Crime, Victimization, or Social Problems courses.
Heide, Kathleen M. 2013. Understanding Parricide: When Sons and Daughters Kill Parents. New York: Oxford University Press.
Reviewer: Dianne R. Layden, Central New Mexico Community College
Kathleen Heide is a professor of criminology at the University of South Florida in Tampa who has studied parricide since the 1980s. In addition to Understanding Parricide: When Sons and Daughters Kill Parents (2013), she has authored two acclaimed books, Why Kids Kill Parents: Child Abuse and Adolescent Homicide (1992) and Young Killers: The Challenge of Juvenile Homicide (1999), another book entitled Animal Cruelty: Pathway to Violence against People, and over 100 scholarly articles.
Dr. Heide is also a licensed mental health professional who has conducted over 120 assessments of adolescent homicide offenders. As a clinician, her interest in parricide cases is “to unravel the motivational dynamics that propel defendants to kill others” (xiv). She is a court-appointed expert on matters of homicide, children, and families, and an internationally known consultant and lecturer.
In an interview, Dr. Heide told me that her first book on parricide was spawned some 25 years ago by her assessment of adolescent parricide offender Terry Adams (pseudonym), who later called her from prison and asked her to tell his story because people needed to know. In response, she changed the subject of her first book from juvenile homicide to parricide. In Understanding Parricide, Adams’ story is told in Chapter 1.
Understanding Parricide provides a comprehensive and compelling treatment of this complex subject that could become the standard reference in the field. Nothing is lacking in its coverage and presentation of research conclusions about an array of topics, including child maltreatment, matricide, patricide, legal issues in defending, prosecuting, and punishing offenders, forensic assessment, treatment, risk assessment, and prevention. The reader will become acutely aware of the family, societal, and legal circumstances of parricide offenders. Special attention is given to the involvement of females in various types of parricides.
The writing is clear, concise, and engaging. In the Forward, professor of psychiatry George B. Palermo lauds the book for “an intense humanness that Dr. Heide is able to transfer into her narrative” (x). He calls Understanding Parricide a “criminological treatise” that argues for an end to the maltreatment of children as a means of preventing parricide and ensuring the development of physically and mentally healthy children.
Dr. Heide’s objectives are “to put parricide in perspective in terms of its occurrence, to provide portraits of offenders and victims, and to elucidate the pathways that lead to murder” (xiii). Written for professionals in psychology, medicine, law, criminal justice, and social services, the book provides an extensive literature review and is replete with research findings, case studies, and illustrations. The 16 chapters are followed by 62 pages of notes and references and an index. Cases are prevalent to illustrate concepts, with five chapters devoted to full case studies that include the reflections of offenders in follow-up interviews many years after the killings. The Afterword written by retired juvenile court judge Irene Sullivan confirms the similarity of the cases in the book to the characteristics of the serious juvenile offenders she observed. On the subject of parricide, this book is the place to start.
The phenomenon of parricide is rare, comprising 2% of homicides annually in the United States and the same or similar rates in other countries. Between 1976-2007, most U.S. arrested parricide offenders were adults, but 20% were under the age of 18, and 30% were under the age of 20. Females comprised an annual average of 15% of the offenders. Eighty-four percent acted alone in killing a single parent or stepparent, 9% had an accomplice in killing a single victim, and 7% killed two or more victims alone (6.3%) or with an accomplice (.08%).
The book’s focus is on adolescent and juvenile parricide offenders, with pertinent information about adult offenders. Based on her research and clinical practice, Dr. Heide posits there are four types of parricide offenders: severely abused, severely mentally ill, dangerously antisocial, and enraged; the latter two types of offenders span both categories. Most who kill to end severe abuse are children or adolescents (or possibly young adults), while those who kill as a result of severe mental illness are usually adults.
Because of few alternatives, adolescents are at higher risk than adults to become parricide offenders when home conditions are unfavorable. Running away and surviving on their own are rarely meaningful possibilities due to limited financial resources, skills, and education; school attendance laws; and workplace regulations governing teenage employment. Because of their youthful stage of development, adolescents are not psychologically equipped to cope as well as adults with deplorable environmental conditions. Mentally healthy adults are far better positioned to leave intolerable family situations.
Because the facts of a case may suggest different types of parricide offenders, in-depth forensic assessments must be conducted. Assessments entail clinical evaluations of the youth; interviews with family members, and other parties such as teachers, neighbors, and friends; and a review of case-related materials such as school, medical, social services, and psychological records, law enforcement reports, autopsy findings, and depositions of key witnesses.
Legal issues affecting adolescent parricide offenders include the likelihood they will be prosecuted as adults, although holding juvenile offenders as fully accountable as adult offenders has been successfully challenged in recent court cases. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court barred the death penalty for killings committed by offenders under the age of 18, prior to which the U.S. was for many years alone among Western industrialized nations in allowing executions of juveniles who committed murders. The Supreme Court in 2012 struck down existing state laws that mandated life without parole for juveniles convicted of murder.
In the absence of a threat to kill, prediction of parricide is not possible due to its rarity and low base rate. Risk factors are the presence in families of chemical dependence or other severe family dysfunction; a pattern of ongoing violence that includes several types of abuse and neglect; deteriorating conditions and increasing violence; increasing vulnerability of the youth over time due to unremitting turmoil; and availability of a firearm. Interventions include removing the guns and the children from the home, in addition to therapy for the children, parents, and other family members.
That prevention is possible is discussed in the last chapter. Child abuse and neglect are increasingly viewed as everyone’s responsibility. Prevention strategies include reports to public agencies; support programs for parents and future parents, such as prenatal and postnatal medical care and crisis counseling; education programs to help parents cope with the stresses of raising children, since child mistreatment often results from ignorance and not improper motives; courses developed by the schools to increase awareness by students; a supportive network to guide children through the process of obtaining help; provision of public information through television, radio, the print media, and the Internet; and availability of mental health services for members of abusive and high-stress families.
Dr. Heide concludes with a call to action to stem the human carnage of child abuse and an allegory about the value of one life: A boy is on a beach filled with thousands of starfish that have washed ashore and will die with the rise of the sun. As he throws them back into the sea one by one, he is asked by an observer what possible difference his efforts could make. He throws back another starfish and says, “It makes a difference to this one.” (369).