John Christopher Smith, a Black man who is said to have intellectual disabilities worked at a restaurant owned by a white man for 100 hours a week for five years without pay.
When John Christopher Smith didn’t perform in a way that was satisfactory for Bobby Paul Edwards, he was beaten, burned with hot grease, and tortured. Smith worked more than 100 hours a week for 5 years without pay.
He was a Black American slave.
“He would beat me with belts and all that,” Smith, 39 said. “He would take the tongs to the grease on my neck.”
In 2018, Bobby Paul Edwards plead guilty to one count of forced labor for using “violence and other coercive means.”
“It is almost inconceivable that instances of forced labor endure in this country to this day — a century and a half after the Emancipation Proclamation,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband of the Civil Rights Division.
“The Department of Justice will continue to investigate, prosecute, and convict human traffickers involved in forced labor, seeking justice on behalf of their victims.”
Smith’s disability is mild delayed cognitive development, a condition that results in intellectual functioning significantly below average. He’d been working at J&J Cafeteria since he was 12.
Edwards was sentenced to 10 years in prison and was ordered to pay Smith $272,952.96, but a court recently ruled that the amount should be doubled with Smith standing to receive $545,000.
In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit said the initial amount “erred in refusing to include liquidated damages.”
Employees knew about the abuse and said nothing. According to Geneane Caines, an “advocate” for Smith, her daughter-in-law was a waitress who was scared of Edwards.
“Well, costumers that were going in there would hear stuff and they didn’t know what was going on, and they would ask the waitresses, and the waitresses were so scared of Bobby they wouldn’t tell them then what it was,” she said.
According to a press release from the Department of Justice, “between 2009 and 2014, the defendant used violence and other coercive means to compel the victim to work for more than 100 hours a week for no pay at a restaurant managed by the defendant in Conway, South Carolina. The defendant subjected the victim to physical and emotional abuse whenever the victim made a mistake or failed to work fast enough.”
A concerned South Carolina resident contacted authorities in 2014 and Smith was put under the care of the state’s adult protective services.
The case was investigated by the FBI in collaboration with the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division.