Free Republic

A 20-year-old young woman who dropped out of college decided to return to school after a year of working in her boyfriend’s family’s restaurant business. For the sake of her story, we’ll call her Jane. Jane’s parents had set aside 30,000 dollars in a college tuition account for her. But instead, her parents used the money to remodel their kitchen after Jane moved in with her boyfriend, despite her parent’s advice not to. When Jane realized what her parents had done, she was shocked and angry. She asked for access to her college tuition account. Still, her parents refused, citing...

A Vietnamese mother, lured by the promise of a high-paying factory job, chased her dream of sending both daughters to college into a sweatshop far from home, with no exit. She fell prey to men who took her to the American territory of Samoa, where she was enslaved with about 250 other desperate women from China and Vietnam. Those who complained were beaten and starved. Freed when the garment factory closed in 2000, some of the women risked their lives to help U.S. authorities investigate and convict the kingpins of what federal authorities have called the largest human trafficking case...