A former restaurant owner forced an employee to work for him for five years without pay. An American court North Carolina Bobby Paul Edwards, now 56, owes double the original salary to the mentally ill John Christopher Smith – a total of $ 546,000.
Edwards, a white man, has already been sentenced to ten years in prison after pleading guilty to slave labor in 2019. These activities took place from 2009 to 2014. Smith had to work more than 100 hours a week.
Step “The Post and CourierAfrican American Smith has worked in a restaurant for 31 years – he is said to have been twelve years old. Edwards would have beaten his victim with a belt and burned him with hot metal bandages around his neck.
“I wanted to leave this place so badly”
The judge concluded that Edwards had “enslaved” his employee. This time he stopped Smith, according to a statementWashington Post‘In the cockroach-infested apartment he had. Smith’s lawyers described them as “inhumane” and “harmful.”
“Most of the time, I felt insecure and Bobby could have killed me if he wanted to,” Smith said, according to court records. “I wanted so badly to leave this place, but I don’t know how to avoid getting hurt.”
Colleagues at the restaurant who witnessed the abuse did not intervene – fearing Edwards. Smith’s ordeal finally ended in 2014 after a restaurant employee’s relative reported the crime to authorities.
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