Immokalee girl's saga etched
in Mayan ways

BY AMY BENNETT WILLIAMS • awilliams@news-
press.com • March 7, 2010

1:10 A.M. — For six months, the girl lived in a
stained stucco house on a dead-end Immokalee
street.

It's impossible to know exactly what went on behind
the SpongeBob sheet-covered window. The people
who live there tell one story; a federal indictment
released this week tells another.

What is certain is early Wednesday a SWAT team
showed up and arrested Francisco Francisco
Domingo, 47, now in federal custody, charged with
enslaving the girl, forcing her to pick crops and
make pornography.

Law enforcement had been watching Domingo and
the house for more than a year, after the girl told
them he'd bought the then-15-year-old from her
mother and smuggled her out of Guatemala.

Domingo, a legal U.S. resident, faces 10 years in
prison without parole and a $250,000 fine on two
slavery-related charges,with more charges pending,
said Douglas Molloy, chief assistant U.S. attorney.
His detention hearing is at 9:30 a.m. Monday.

According to a Collier County sheriff's report,
Domingo brought the girl to live with his family in
Immokalee: his wife, three children, two
grandchildren and another couple. There, he raped
her regularly, made her pick crops on farms in
Florida, South Carolina and Georgia and forced her
to have sex with men in houses in Lehigh Acres and
Immokalee, which he filmed,

Nonsense, said Domingo's son, also named
Francisco Domingo.

"My father is a good man who provides for his
family," he said Thursday, sitting on a wobbly
plastic chair in the family's plywood-floored
kitchen. "All he does is work - he's worked picking
tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers all his life to
take care of us.

"What (the girl) says about him is lies."

Different stories

The girl, the younger Domingo said, was a niece
who wanted to come to the United States, so his
father helped arrange it. Once here, "she didn't want
to work, just lie around or watch TV."

Why would she accuse his father of such crimes?

"I don't know," Domingo said. "She's confused,
maybe mad."

Sad - "profoundly sad" - is what the girl's
godmother, Maria Galvan of Naples calls her.
Galvan, also an agricultural worker, befriended the
girl at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church,
which the Domingo family also attended.


"She was a sweet girl, docile and very interested in
religion," said Galvan.

"There was a retreat and the girl asked to go,"
Galvan said. "She begged (Domingo and his wife)
but they didn't want to let her. She begged and
begged. I assured them I would take care of her, be
responsible for her. Finally, they said yes."

On the retreat, the girl seemed quiet and fragile,
frequently crying - especially when it came time to
return home.

"She didn't want to go back there and asked if she
could stay with us a few days more," Galvan said.
"We sat in the car while she cried. She said,
'Godmother, something is happening to me that
makes me ashamed and I don't even know if you'll
believe me, but my uncle is abusing me.'"

At first, Galvan said, the scope of the violence didn't
register.

"I didn't know such abuse existed. I come from a
family, thank God, where this sort of thing is
unimaginable," she said. "I wondered what we could
do - she's not ours - what was I getting into?"

But Galvan, who has six grown children and could
feel the girl's suffering, took her in.

"She was so sad. I'd look in on her and she'd be
alone in her room, down on her knees, head bent,
praying, crying," Galvan said.

Galvan turned to the church, confiding in parish
secretary Zoila Reyna.

"I told her it was her duty to do the right thing and
go to the law," said Reyna, who's trained to
recognize signs of human trafficking.

Galvan and the girl spoke with Collier Detective
Charlie Frost and victim advocate Marisol
Schloendorn.

Meanwhile, Domingo visited Galvan's house a
couple of times when she wasn't there to threaten
the girl, Galvan said. Her mother also would call
from Guatemala to ask for money and scold her for
not returning to Domingo, Galvan said.

"I'd hear her crying and saying, 'Mama, I swear I'm in
good hands now,'" Galvan said.

Eventually, the girl went to live in a foster home
where she could get therapy and more intense care,
but she stayed in touch with Galvan.

Galvan recalled the last time they spoke.

"She said, 'Godmother, when I turn 18 in July, I want
to come live with you,'" Galvan said.

"I told her yes."

Horrible but not uncommon is how Nola Theiss,
executive director of the Human Trafficking
Awareness Partnerships, characterizes the girl's
story.

People don't understand why a parent would sell a
girl - but people also don't understand how
desperate rural Guatemala is, said immigrant
advocate Genelle Grant, who teaches at FGCU and
Edison State College.

"These are Mayans who've been oppressed since the
Spanish arrived," Grant said. "The situation of
Guatemalan women is the worst in the Americas -
it's not just poverty; it's starvation."

Most of those who live in the bus-stop town of
Cuatro Caminos, where the girl is from, are
descendants of the ancient Maya whose first
language is a Mayan dialect and not Spanish, which
many learn only later.

Half the male population can't read or write, and
most women can only sign their names, Guatemalan
public health nurse Francisco Bruno Tarox Herrera
told The News-Press in 2005.

When a girl gets her period, she's considered a
woman, Grant said, even if she's only 11.

"Once she's a woman, they can sell her," Grant said.
"One less mouth to feed and more money to feed the
mouths that remain. She's sold as a wife, but she

becomes a slave."

Grant estimates there are hundreds of women with
this history in Southwest Florida.

Cautionary tale

The contours of this week's case are familiar to
Theiss and Grant.

Grant has created an educational CD, "Lucia's Letter,"
which recounts a Guatemalan girl's hopes of a better
life in the United States turning into a nightmare of
captivity and abuse. The story merges the
experiences of several Guatemalan women in
Southwest Florida and is a cautionary tale for the
women and girls still at home. Last year, public
television station WGCU made a documentary about
the project.

Grant has taken the letter to 62 Guatemalan villages
and it's broadcast regularly on Guatemalan radio
stations in hopes it will save lives.

"Please, Mamita," the letter concludes, "do not ever
let my little sisters make that trip because on the way
there is much danger and suffering. There is verbal
abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse."