Former Quality Assurance Director Pleads Guilty
An appellate court in the United States upheld a $3 million jury verdict for “Sarah Roe,” an
Ethiopian trafficking survivor held in forced labour and sexual servitude in
Yemen. This
marks the first time an appellate court in the United States has upheld extraterritorial
jurisdiction in a federal civil trafficking case. Pro bono firm Jones Day
litigated the
case, Roe v. Howard, in the trial court in Virginia and in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
On 25 February 2019, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a multi-million dollar judgment
awarded to a trafficking survivor represented pro bono by Jones
Day. The case was on appeal
from the Eastern District of Virginia, where, in 2017, a jury awarded “Sarah Roe” $3 million in
damages under the civil remedies
provision of the Trafficking Victims Protection
Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) for conduct that occurred on a U.S. Embassy housing compound in
Yemen. The defendant,
a former U.S. State Department official, appealed the verdict,
arguing that civil damages under the TVPRA were not available for conduct occurring abroad
before
Congress expanded the TVPRA’s extraterritorial jurisdiction in 2008.
The Fourth Circuit evaluated the extraterritorial reach of each of the four
provisions under which Howard had been found liable, holding that recovery under the civil
provision was available for extraterritorial acts “to the extent that the particular predicate
offence supporting a specific claim applies extraterritorially.” The prohibition
on sex
trafficking (18 U.S.C. § 1591), the court said, “present[ed] the simplest analysis,” since it
reached all offences committed by U.S. nationals on “premises of
United States diplomatic,
consular, military or other United States Government missions” since 2003. Because sex
trafficking committed by a U.S. national on U.S.
embassy grounds was expressly covered
under 18 U.S.C. § 1591 at the time of Roe’s abuse, civil recovery was available under the TVPRA.
