(Updated)The feds returned to Fair Haven a year after rounding up immigrants for deportation — but this time to save undocumented Ecuadorians allegedly working in slave-like conditions at a well-known Italian bakery.
Rather than face deportation, the six Ecuadorians are being protected in hiding. They filed a lawsuit this month against the bakery’s owners.
The complaint centers around Rocco’s Bakery on Ferry Street (pictured), where the family of Ecuadorians was working. They claim the owners failed to pay them for forced overtime, kept them trapped in apartments above the bakery, regularly threatened them, and sexually harassed the women.
Their road to freedom began when one of the immigrants, named Mercedes, hit a breaking point and decided to speak up about years of forced labor and sexual abuse. She turned to her church, led by Father Manship.
Mercedes turned to her church last June, when lost her job. She was one of dozens of people seeking help from Manship’s church, St. Rose of Lima in Fair Haven, right after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) swept Fair Haven with immigration raids last summer. Manship (pictured above) was helping terrorized families find out what had happened to their husbands and fathers after ICE raided their homes.
Mercedes wasn’t there about the raids. She was there about Rocco’s.
And her case a different ending.
St. Rose’s contacted New Haven legal aid lawyers. They contacted the government. ICE helped Mercedes and her family flee to safety.
Now hiding in safety at an undisclosed location, the woman and her extended family, through New Haven Legal Assistance Association, have filed a federal lawsuit against Rocco’s. Rocco’s is a well-known mom-and-pop Italian pastry shop at 432 Ferry St., in what used to be the heart of the city’s Italian community, now populated heavily with Latinos. The suit seeks at least $38,000 in back wages and a restraining order against bakery owner Antonio “Tony” DiBenedetto, his wife Anna, and their sons Ferdinando and Giovanni.
Click here to read the lawsuit. Click here to read a Legal Aid press release about it. Click here to read an article about the case by the Courant’s Kim Martineau, who broke the story Tuesday morning.
“The lawsuit is clearly interested in one thing, and one thing only — money,” said the DiBenedetto’s attorney, Hugh Keefe, Wednesday. Keefe denied the allegations of abuse and said he has “numerous” photographs of the two families celebrating together, including attending each other’s weddings.
Keefe described the suit as pitting one immigrant family against another: Tony and Anna DiBenedetto are immigrants from Italy; their sons were born in the States.
“The Italian family has contributed something to this community in a tremendous way, and [has] been extremely generous to the Ecuadorian family, who has, for whatever reason decided to turn their backs on them,” Keefe said. He also questioned why the plaintiffs took so long to file suit.
A woman working at the bakery Tuesday said the family had no comment.
“Human Trafficking”
The Ecuadorian family says Tony DiBenedetto beckoned them to the U.S. with the promise of labor, then kept them under a form of modern slavery, forcing them to work long hours below minimum wage and demanding sexual favors from the women in exchange for rent money. They workers say they kept quiet because they were told they would be fired, evicted and deported if they told anyone of their situation.
The suit was filed on behalf of Mercedes and her daughter, as well as Mercedes’ sister Maria, her husband Nestor and their two children [last names withheld]. The suit details deplorable working conditions behind the scenes at the prim pastry shop, famous for its cannoli and cakes. It describes conditions where women and children were trafficked to the U.S., forced to haul bags of flour during 12-hour days without bathroom breaks; conditions where women endured sexual harassment and assault while on the job — all under fear of punishment if they spoke up.
“Whatever we think about the issue of illegal immigration, we can all agree that no one should be forced to work in fear of physical harm or sexual assault or in fear that they will be punished if they complain about working conditions,” wrote Jennifer Mellon, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, in a press statement.
The suit was filed under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which was passed in 2000 to combat coerced labor — labor done, often for little or no money, under the threat of violence, abuse or abuse of the law.
Mercedes and her family have been protected by federal immigration authorities, instead of being deported. An ICE spokeswoman wouldn’t comment on the case, citing pending litigation. The plaintiffs’ attorneys say the family is entitled to that protection because the workers are victims of human trafficking.
“Human traffickers target vulnerable workers, like these, who are from a foreign country, have limited education, and speak little or no English,” wrote the attorneys in the statement.
Criminal prosecution of the DiBenedettos remains a possibility. A spokesman for the Connecticut U.S. Attorney’s office was mum on whether charges would be pressed.
The Road To Rocco’s
Nestor first started working at Rocco’s 14 years ago. The owner, Tony DiBenedetto, promised jobs for family members if he brought them to the U.S., according to the suit. They took him up on the offer, arriving in New Haven about 10 years ago. When they got to town, the DiBenedettos housed them in two apartments, one above the store and one in a house adjacent to the store.
The family says they were told never to open the door for anyone. Tony DiBenedetto threatened that if they told anyone where they worked, he would evict them, fire them and cause them to be deported, according to the suit.
The family tells of how DiBenedetto, an immigrant himself from Italy, fought back against their efforts to follow the law and become part of U.S. society.
Two of the children started working at ages 13 and 14, during the day, when according to labor laws they were supposed to be in school. DiBenedetto allegedly told the family that as undocumented immigrants, they weren’t allowed to go to school.
When the family requested written lease agreements and rent receipts, DiBenedetto refused, according to the suit. When Nestor, seeking to change his immigration status, requested proof of employment, DiBenedetto allegedly refused.
As the family continued to work at the bakery, the situation got worse. Several years ago, the bakery owners split up the women and men, moving the men to the night shift — a move designed to facilitate sexual abuse, according to the plaintiffs.
Isolated in a baking facility in Meriden, the women allege they were called “whores,” fondled, and forced to watch Tony DiBenedetto parade around naked. DiBenedetto would demand sexual favors if they couldn’t pay the rent, or would offer to lend them money if they had sex with him, the women say. One day, one of the daughters was pushed into an office, where DiBenedetto tried to take off her clothes and sexually assault her, according to the suit.
The women say they sometimes feared for their safety at the factory, especially when Ferdinando DiBenedetto used drugs at the workplace and became violent, at one point throwing a knife. The other son, Giovanni, pushed a cart at one of them. For a long time, they didn’t speak up about the abuse, they say, because they were told if they complained, they would be evicted or deported.
The Last Straw
One day, Mercedes couldn’t keep quiet any longer.
It was right around the time when the city was crafting its immigrant-friendly ID card. Mercedes went to City Hall, to a June 4 meeting of the Board of Aldermen, to support the card, which was designed to help immigrants who didn’t have other forms of ID open bank accounts or use city services.
The next day, her face appeared in the New Haven Register, in the periphery of a photo accompanying a front-page article on the ID. When she showed up to work, she found her boss Tony DiBenedetto in a state of fury, she said. He was holding the news article and had circled her face in the photo.
“The ID card is not worth shit!” he allegedly yelled in a mix of Spanish, Italian and broken English. “You want papers, but these papers are worthless. They are going for the bathroom. I’ll give you toilet paper instead.”
He fired her on the spot, she said.
“You Don’t Have To Suffer”
Having nowhere to go, and with a husband out of work due to back problems, she turned to her church.
“All chaos was breaking loose in the rectory” at that time, Manship recalled in an interview Tuesday. Weeping families were looking for their loved ones: Thirty of the parishioners had been swept up in a series of raids that began the morning of June 6 in Fair Haven.
Mercedes and her husband sat down with Nadia Minor, a leader of the church. Nadia heard her story and rushed to tell the pastor.
“I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” Manship said. “It was sad beyond belief, sad that it was an immigrant that did this to another immigrant.”
Manship and Minor helped Mercedes find legal help. The family decided to file suit, even while the rest of the family continued to work at the bakery.
In May 2008, DiBenedetto learned of the family’s intent to sue. The plaintiffs called ICE for help, saying they were afraid that the bakery owners would lash out against them in retaliation.
Rather than deporting them, ICE helped the family escape. In the middle of the night on May 21, in unmarked government cars provided by ICE, the women and their children fled for safety. Social workers from the International Institute in Bridgeport have helped them relocate. Since the family left the city, the DiBenedettos have tried to contact them and threaten them through intermediaries, the plaintiffs say.
Manship said Tuesday that he is in contact with the family members, and they are safe. At Sunday’s Mass, he told his congregation what their fellow parishioners had gone through. He encouraged other people to step out of the shadows, too, and speak up against employers who take advantage of their vulnerability.
“You do not need to suffer such affronts against your dignity,” he told them. “You don’t have to suffer in silence.”