Performance Slaves
Every once in a while, I’ll see a story like this one where people are kept against their will as performers. This usually happens with Chinese citizens, but obviously can happen anywhere.
They were forced to work 15 to 20 hours a day for about $200 a week instead of the promised $957, with $757 deducted as “expenses for their upkeep.”
An appalled spectator tipped off the police after seeing the show, in which Giusi, the 19-year-old woman, tried to escape from the piranha tank “trembling with terror” her head was held down by Ingrassia.
Her 16-year-old sister, Olga, was bitten by snakes that she was forced to drape on her body, and she had injuries to her stomach where the snakes had wound themselves too tightly around her. The circus owners had rubbed ointment on snake bites on her legs but had refused to take her to a doctor.
Police said the Bulgarian family had lived in the back of a cockroach-infested lorry used for animal transport. The only meat they had been given since January consisted of leftovers from the circus owners’ Easter lunch last weekend.
Reports said Giusi had a tumour on her ear for which she had twice been operated in Bulgaria. Doctors had told her never to get water in her ears, especially cold water. However the water tank in which she was forced to swim with eight piranhas was kept at a temperature just above zero in order to make the piranhas lethargic.
