thats why im basically panafricanist and still say, its important to remember the slave trade ended due to eliminating the buyer/the demand, not the seller/supply. even today look at the middlemen herding ppl into libya and saudi arabia
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A girl brought to Texas from a West African village as a child spent 16 years working in forced servitude for a well-off Southlake couple who abused her, kept her from attending school and didn't once celebrate her birthday, authorities say.

Mohamed Toure and Denise Florence Cros-Toure of Southlake, both 57, each face a federal charge of forced labor. They were arrested at their home Wednesday and made an initial court appearance Thursday.

A lawyer for the couple, Scott H. Palmer, said in a statement Friday that the criminal complaint against his clients "is riddled with salacious allegations, fabrications and lies."

Authorities began investigating in 2016 after the victim fled the home on Briarridge Drive with two bags of her belongings.

According to the criminal complaint, the girl was living in a mud hut in a village in Guinea when she went to work for Cros-Toure's parents in a city. In January 2000, she was taken to an airport and put on a flight — alone — to the United States.

The girl's passport and visa said she was 5 at the time (although other documents indicate she may have been as old as 13), and she did not speak English. What she remembers most from the trip is "a kind flight attendant who gave her cookies and a toy," according to court documents.

She was quickly put to work by the couple after she arrived at the home on Briarridge, she told authorities. After the five Toure children left for school in the morning she "would start cleaning, making the beds, vacuuming, cooking and gardening," according to the complaint, and would work until the children went to bed.

Neighbors who saw the girl walking the children to school, mowing the lawn and painting the home assumed Toure and Cros-Toure had a nanny, the document says.


Carroll ISD, which include the couple's home, had no record of the girl attending school in the district. Neighbors said she wasn't allowed to play with other children, and she told investigators she wasn't given the same opportunities as the family's children — learning to ride a bike, use a computer, swim, drive or even care for her hair.

For years, she said, she had to sleep on the floor in one of the children's bedrooms, and she was given old clothes to wear. A Southlake police officer who encountered her in a park in 2002 described her appearance as unkempt.

She never had a birthday party, she said, and was unsure of her own age.

The victim also told investigators that the couple abused her both physically and emotionally. Slapping gave way to being hit with a belt and later an electrical cord, the complaint says, and on one occasion Cros-Toure ripped an earring out of her left ear. A federal agent noted scars on the girl's arms and ear.


The girl said the couple would yell at her frequently, calling her "a little nothing," a slave and — in a conversation that was recorded — a whore. Cros-Toure sometimes kicked her out of the home as punishment, she told investigators, and she would sleep in nearby Bicentennial Park.

In August 2016, several former neighbors helped the victim flee the home with some of her belongings, photographic proof of her time there and her travel documents, which were long expired. She was taken to a YMCA, which contacted authorities.

Police said that Toure and Cros-Toure never reported the girl missing.


Palmer, the couple's lawyer, said that the victim was always treated like a member of the family — each of whom had chores and responsibilities. She was given clothes, food, a bed, spending money and Christmas gifts, he said, had social media accounts and was in contact with her family in Guinea.

The attorney disputed that the girl was 5 when she came to the U.S., and he said witness accounts and photographs would "reveal the truth that she was never enslaved, forced to do anything against her will, never beaten, never threatened." As evidence, he offered pictures Friday from an Instagram account purported to be hers.

"We look forward to amassing a mountain of evidence to refute the Government's portrayal of our clients," Palmer said in a written statement, "and look forward to revealing the motivation of this woman to lie, betray, and attempt to destroy the family that took her in at the request of her father for a better life in the United States."


Toure and Cros-Toure, both natives of Guinea, were granted asylum in the U.S. in 2000, according to court documents.

Toure is the son of former Guinean President Ahmed Sekou Toure, and Cros-Toure's father was the nation's secretary of state.

Investigators found little to no work history for the couple, who appeared to receive income from "significant" overseas deposits. Their home, on a leafy street in well-to-do Southlake, was appraised by Tarrant County at nearly $600,000 this year.

In the mid-1990s, the couple's names and photographs occasionally appeared in The Dallas Morning News' philanthropy coverage for their support of causes including Fair Park's African American Museum.


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Cros-Toure once operated Out of Africa, an exotic-furnishings store in Dallas' Preston Center. A 1994 article in The News about the store's opening noted that she and business partner Jan Showers had important connections.

"Invoking the names of Cros-Toure's father and father-in-law opened doors and cut through bureaucratic red tape, allowing the two Texas women access to artworks and domestic goods not easily found in Dallas," the article read.

Toure and Cros-Toure each face up to 20 years in federal prison if convicted. A detention hearing is set for Monday.