Shandra Woworuntu Experience

The first week of June, 2001 Shandra Woworuntu arrived in the US, upon her arrival, she was hoping to start a career in the hotel industry, she came to America thinking it was the land of promise and opportunity, as she moved through immigration she was very excited to be in a new country. Once in the arrival hall, she heard her name, and turned to find a man named Johnny warmly smiling and holding a sign with her picture on it. Originally, she that he would drive her to the hotel she was supposed to work at. The hotel was in Chicago and she arrived at JFK, nearly 800 miles away. In Indonesia, she earned a degree in finance, she worked in a bank as a trader and analyst. However, in 1998 she lost her job when Asia was in turmoil from a financial crisis that hit the year before. Consequently, she has a 3 year she needed to feed, so she started searching the papers for work, when she found an add that advertised hospitality openings in big hotels in the US, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Thus, she decided to apply for the openings in the US, the only requirements were, she could pay the fee of 2,700 and speak a little English, aside from that the recruitment process was very lengthy with lots of interviews. Once she passed all the test and was given the job, she had planned to have her family raise her daughter until she made enough money to come back home and raise her daughter, herself. Once she arrived to JFK with 4 other women and a man, they were divided into two groups and Johnny took her passport and her documents, then led her and the two-other woman in his car. Now is when things became very strange, the driver arrived in queens, parked the car and told them to get into a different car with a different driver. Hence, she became worried, but convinced herself this was part of the process, the new driver didn’t go far either and parked outside a diner, they were again told to change cars, as money changed hands. Then the third driver took them to a house and once again they were exchanged. In this case the fourth driver had a gun and took them to another house, once they were there he knocked on the floor and said “Mama-San New Girl!” Just a few hours after arriving in the US she was forced to have sex, Johnny appeared the next day and convinced them it was a mistake and the next day they would go receive their ID’s and uniforms and delivered to the hotel they were to work. Henceforth began to relax and thought the nightmare was over, the next day, another man arrived and took them to get their ID’s and uniforms, unfortunately when they arrived at the uniform store, it was a lingerie store. The other women were enjoying the shopping trip, she …show more content…
In addition, she went to the Indonesian consulate for help, they did not help her either, she was angry and upset. The weather was changing and she had nothing, nowhere to go for shelter, she slept on the Staten Island Ferry, NYC Subway and in Times Square, she begged for food from stranger and told them her story whenever she could get them to listen. Eventually, she met a man named Eddy in Grand Ferry Park, he was a sailor on holiday and he brought her some food. Plans were made for them to meet again the next day at noon. When he arrived the next day, he informed her, he had made some calls on her behalf, he called the FBI and the FBI called the police precinct, they rushed to the precinct so, the officers could help her. Eddy drove her to the precinct, once there she was questioned at length, by two officers. Above all she kept a diary that had the locations of the brothels and showed them books of matches from the casinos where she was also forced to work. The officers phoned immigration and the airlines and found that her story checked out. In the end, she led officers to the brothel to save her