ESSEX COUNTY — She smuggled girls from the villages of West Africa to the streets of East Orange, then controlled them like chattel. She made them work 14-hour days without pay at hair braiding salons. And she enforced rules with fists and threats of voodoo curses.

But Akouavi Kpade Afolabi’s power was gone today as she stood shackled with her eyes downcast before a federal judge in Newark to be sentenced for running a human-trafficking ring that preyed on African girls seeking opportunity in America.

"Instead what they found was a life of slavery and fear," Judge Jose L. Linares said.

And with those words, the judge sentenced Afolabi to 27 years in prison. She is the fourth and final defendant in a case authorities say illustrated how victims of human-trafficking can be subjugated unnoticed in the United States.

Afolabi, an illiterate yet once-prosperous jewelry and textile merchant, was convicted last year of conspiracy to commit forced labor and other crimes for running an enterprise that ensnared more than 20 victims from Togo and Ghana.

She recruited the girls, some just 10 years old, from impoverished villages and promised to educate them in the United States. But once they arrived, Afolabi put them to work in salons in Newark and East Orange and forced them to surrender every cent, which totaled more than $7,400 a month, authorities said. She forbade them from attending school. And they were not allowed to make friends or learn English.

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"This type of behavior is intolerable in a civilized society," U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman said.

According to the U.S. Justice Department, more than 1,200 human trafficking cases were reported nationwide during 2007 and 2008. The problem is especially pervasive for New Jersey, where authorities say victims blend into large immigrant communities and may be invisible even to those who pass them on the street or sit beside them on the bus.

"They are hidden in plain sight," said Peter T. Edge, head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New Jersey.

Afolabi has been in custody since she was charged in 2007 along with three others, including her son and ex-husband. Her ex-husband, Lassissi Afolabi, 47, is serving a 24 years. Her son, Dereck Hounakey, 33, is serving 4 1/2 years.

Investigators said they don’t know Afolabi’s exact age; her lawyer said even she wasn’t sure. With her graying hair in short, unkempt braids, Afolabi sat shackled during today’s proceeding, listening with help from an interpreter translating into her native Ewe. Moments before being sentenced, she begged for leniency.

"I am pleading for mercy. Please forgive me," Afolabi said, speaking softly through the interpreter.

Her case began in 2007, when a woman from Ghana told ICE agents how Afolabi had smuggled her to the United States by having her pose as the wife of a man who won a visa lottery to come to America. Once she arrived, Afolabi confiscated the girl’s passport, visas and other immigration documents and put her to work.

During the trial, Afolabi’s lawyer, Olubukola O. Adetula, said prosecutors mistook a West African-style apprenticeship program as slavery. Today, he told of how Afolabi’s cared for the victims, lifted them from poverty and taught them a trade.

"There young girls were looking for a better life … and my client saw an opportunity to bring them into this country," Adetula said.