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Soph0571

(9,685 posts)
Fri Nov 8, 2019, 10:10 AM Nov 2019

23 Years a Slave: Restaurant Owner Gets Bullshit Sentence for Enslaving Intellectually Disabled...

...Black Man

A South Carolina restauranteur was sentenced to prison after admitting he used violence, threats, and intimidation to force a black man to work more than 100 hours a week with no pay in a stunning case of throwback slavery.

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge R. Bryan Harwell sentenced 54-year-old Bobby Paul Edwards to 10 years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to one count of forced labor, according to a press release from the Department of Justice. Prosecutors say that Edwards, who managed his family’s restaurant, forced Chris Smith, an intellectually disabled black man, to work for free and live in a small room behind the restaurant. Court documents show that Edwards physically abused Smith for at least 17 years, including whipping Smith with a belt, beating him with pots and pans and even burning him with hot grease.


[link:https://www.theroot.com/23-years-a-slave-restaurant-owner-gets-bullshit-senten-1839697471|]

How on earth was this not picked up on much earlier... and 10 years??? bloody ridiculous...
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23 Years a Slave: Restaurant Owner Gets Bullshit Sentence for Enslaving Intellectually Disabled... (Original Post) Soph0571 Nov 2019 OP
The restaurant, land and restauranteur's life savings need to be given to the victim Submariner Nov 2019 #1
Who would eat there? AZ8theist Nov 2019 #4
Apparently it only started with that guy as the brother of the owner, took over operations in 2009. BumRushDaShow Nov 2019 #2
it looks like there's plenty of basis for multiple civil suits Hermit-The-Prog Nov 2019 #7
Someone would have to do it on behalf of him BumRushDaShow Nov 2019 #8
is there a guardian? Hermit-The-Prog Nov 2019 #9
Apparently, according to one of the articles I found from 2015 BumRushDaShow Nov 2019 #10
Edwards should have been given 23 years + 17 additional years MagickMuffin Nov 2019 #3
Grotesque. JudyM Nov 2019 #5
Customers reported that they sometimes heard Smith being beaten and screaming for his life. IndyOp Nov 2019 #6

Submariner

(12,482 posts)
1. The restaurant, land and restauranteur's life savings need to be given to the victim
Fri Nov 8, 2019, 10:20 AM
Nov 2019

That dump must be closed by now. Who would dare eat there.

AZ8theist

(5,335 posts)
4. Who would eat there?
Fri Nov 8, 2019, 10:34 AM
Nov 2019

Dozens and dozens and dozens of knuckle-dragging racist Trumpanzees. This asshole is probably a hero to them. Wouldn't surprise me if Doturd pardons him...

BumRushDaShow

(127,260 posts)
2. Apparently it only started with that guy as the brother of the owner, took over operations in 2009.
Fri Nov 8, 2019, 10:33 AM
Nov 2019

And it was also apparently reported to authorities back in 2014 and investigated - with a local NBC affiliate doing an interview with the victim a year later -

Mentally challenged Conway restaurant worker allegedly tortured by employer

By Theo Hayes | February 16, 2015 at 8:52 AM EST - Updated July 10 at 9:05 PM

CONWAY, SC (WMBF) - It's a tale of alleged torture: a mentally-challenged man says he was physically abused by his employer for years. "He would beat me with belts and all that," says 37-year-old John Christopher Smith. "Take the tongs to the grease on my neck." Smith explained what happened while looking out over the Waccamaw River, alongside one of his advocates. "I want him to go to prison, and I want to be there when he go," Smith said. He has been diagnosed with mild delayed cognitive development, a condition that results in intellectual functioning significantly below average.

He says he had been working at J&J Cafeteria in downtown Conway since he was 12 years old, busing tables, cooking and doing all sorts of tasks. "I started off washing dishes after school," he said.

It was a job Smith says he liked, until the manager, 50-year-old Bobby Paul Edwards, the brother of the owner of the restaurant, allegedly started physically abusing him back in 2010. Court documents describe awful things like beatings with a belt, choking, slapping, and even an incident where Smith was punched with a closed fist.

He says he never said anything because he was scared.

https://www.wmbfnews.com/story/28116609/mentally-challenged-conway-employee-discusses-alleged-abuse-by-employer/


From WaPo's current article, suits were filed and DOJ finally got involved -

A white restaurant owner admitted to enslaving a black man. He got 10 years in prison.

By Michael Brice-Saddler
November 7, 2019 at 10:23 p.m. EST

/snip

In a federal lawsuit filed on his behalf by civil attorneys in late 2015, Smith compared Edwards to a slave driver. He said his manager would call him racial slurs, and threatened to “stomp” his throat and beat him “until people would not recognize him.” “Plaintiff was heard crying like a child and yelling, ‘No, Bobby, please!’ After this beating, Defendant Bobby forced Plaintiff to get back to work,” the complaint read.

Smith worked grueling 17-hour days under Edwards’s watch, according to court documents. The only reprieve came on Sundays, when he was still forced to work from 6 a.m. until 2 p.m. The lawsuit alleged that Smith lived in a roach-infested apartment behind the restaurant that was owned by Edwards. Smith’s attorneys described the conditions as “harmful to human health.”

All the while, Edwards did not pay Smith but told him “he was maintaining a bank account” in his name, prosecutors said. The bank account did not exist.

Smith was finally removed from the situation when someone notified authorities. Social workers found Smith with scars on his back and immediately placed him in the custody of Adult Protective Services.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/11/07/white-restaurant-owner-admitted-enslaving-black-man-years-he-got-years-prison/


So the cases were going on for awhile.

But this is an issue of why the cry for "criminal justice reform". It's been a slog.

BumRushDaShow

(127,260 posts)
8. Someone would have to do it on behalf of him
Fri Nov 8, 2019, 03:33 PM
Nov 2019

(like the original suits were filed on his behalf) due to his being mentally challenged. They should make them liquidate the business and put that money in a trust to supplement his living expenses, any medical care, and any additional job training that might be helpful for him to continue to be a productive citizen and have a sense of self-worth & self-sufficiency.

Hermit-The-Prog

(33,021 posts)
9. is there a guardian?
Fri Nov 8, 2019, 03:38 PM
Nov 2019

I confess to just skimming the articles -- a lot going on.

Looks to me like the court should appoint a guardian, assuming he doesn't already have one. The man fell through the cracks (many intentionally created) in our social safety net.

BumRushDaShow

(127,260 posts)
10. Apparently, according to one of the articles I found from 2015
Fri Nov 8, 2019, 03:52 PM
Nov 2019

the state's Department of Social Services had been contacted in 2014 and that is when he had been removed to an "undisclosed location". So I expect between the lawyers and the the state, there is someone handling his affairs.

He had apparently fallen through the cracks by the fact that he had been working at that place since he was 12 (and who knows how he was taken care of then - with the assumption that he wasn't even old enough to be an emancipated minor) and he would be 41 this year.

MagickMuffin

(15,886 posts)
3. Edwards should have been given 23 years + 17 additional years
Fri Nov 8, 2019, 10:33 AM
Nov 2019

Now that would be more in line with what justice should look like.

IndyOp

(15,501 posts)
6. Customers reported that they sometimes heard Smith being beaten and screaming for his life.
Fri Nov 8, 2019, 12:52 PM
Nov 2019

At the link.

Sometimes? In what fucking world is once not enough?

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