BLUE ASH – In India, the word swarag means heaven. But to many there, so does the word America.

That’s why at the age of 37, Harold D’Souza left a successful career in his home country to bring his young family here for a job promising at least $75,000 a year.

“They say in India that only God’s chosen ones get to go to America,” D’Souza says. “So everyone doesn’t get an opportunity. I came on four things: I came on trust, I came on a faith, I thought I came on a promise, and most important, I came to live my American dream.”

But after 18 months, D’Souza was something else – one of thousands of victims of human trafficking. He says he nor his wife were paid for working nonstop at a local restaurant in the days before Ohio had human trafficking laws.

He and his young family slept on the floor in an apartment supplied by his previous employer. The restaurant owner, whom he declines to name for fear of repercussions, didn’t pay him enough to buy winter clothes for his children.

D’Souza even says he received death threats as he pursued his back wages, while his so-called boss once slapped his kids in front of him and his wife was sexually abused at the restaurant.

“I was broken,” D’Souza says.

Sixteen years later, D’Souza is one of the longest-tenured members of the U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking, an offshoot of the U.S. State Department created by a new 2015 law toughening human trafficking laws.

He was originally appointed to the first council by President Obama and recently reappointed by President Trump.

And he is using his influence to bring the council to Cincinnati and Ohio to visit the state, which ranks fourth nationally for the number of complaints called into the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

The council will hold public events in Cincinnati on Sunday and Monday and then in Columbus Tuesday.

The visit coincides with recent national and local stories highlighting human trafficking, including the arrest of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft on prostitution charges, the ongoing controversy surrounding former New York financier Jeffrey Epstein and The Enquirer’s own year-long investigation into sex trafficking in the southern Ohio town of Portsmouth.

“The reason I am sharing this is that what my family has gone through, I don’t want any individual or creature to go through,” D’Souza says. “Every human being is born with freedom. Who are we to curtail that?”

Other members of the eight-person council say the trip to Ohio comes at an opportune time.

“The general public is still detached from this like they think it’s happening to someone else,” says Tanya Gould-Street, herself a survivor of domestic sex trafficking who now runs a Virginia nonprofit she created to help victims of sexual violence.

“Any chance we have to show people it’s happening in their backyards is a good thing.”

'I was stupid. I didn't know.'

D’Souza’s says his parents were from a dirt-poor village with no running water or electricity.

He barely met his wife Dancy before his arranged wedding.

And while he was able to get a solid education and build a career in India, he now acknowledges his understanding of how the world really works.

So when the man who recruited D’Souza to the United States met him at the airport, D’Souza says he thought nothing of it when he was told he should turn over his $1,000 in cash and all his documentation over to his new boss “for safekeeping.”

That was just the beginning of what would become a years-long nightmare for D’Souza and his family.

The restaurant owner promised him the previously mentioned salary of more than $6,000 a month that he never saw in the 18 months he worked there. D’Souza says his wife Dancy started working there too even though she wasn't allowed under her dependent status. Before long, the couple was logging 12-14 hour days every day of the week.

He says his wife was sexually abused at the restaurant, where she was not even legally allowed to work under the conditions of their visas.

They lived in a barren apartment furnished by the owner, where they had no furniture nor enough money to buy the kids winter coats or gloves. He remembers coming home one night at 2 a.m. and opening the door in excitement to see his children.

“My younger son was sleeping on the floor … just in his underpants,” D’Souza says. “And I hit the door on his head so hard that today it hurts me.”

But after a while, he and his wife realized they had nowhere to go. The owner held his papers – and unbeknownst to D’Souza, had canceled his visa, making him an undocumented immigrant.

In fact, he says the owner started calling him “hey, illegal” within a month of his arrival, another way D’Souza says he was dehumanized. The owner had conditioned him to fear American law enforcement with four simple questions:

- Are you registered?

- Do you want to be handcuffed?

- Do you want to go to jail?

- Do you want to be deported?

He also convinced D’Souza to take out a $40,000 personal loan, which he then seized as well and convinced D’Souza that he owed him the money.

The owner was “very intelligent, and he knows how to manipulate, trick and trap the victim,” D’Souza says. “That’s the psychological game in human trafficking and debt bondage.

“I had no clue. I didn’t know how this country operates. I was stupid. I just didn’t know.”

How he got out

Things came to a head 18 months later when D’Souza’s wife started pressing for the back wages he was promised.

She also asked what happened to the cash the owner took from D’Souza at their first meeting.

“And he looked at me and said ‘Harold, what cash?’” D’Souza says. “It broke me.”

D’Souza says a chef at the restaurant, who had previously bought the children winter clothes for school, overheard the confrontation and warned them they needed to get out. The chef took them to the federal building downtown, where the couple filed a back-wages claim with the Labor Department.

“My case was never treated as human trafficking,” D’Souza says. “That’s one of the reasons I am on the council and advocating for victims and awareness of this.”

The conflict even led to a confrontation at the restaurant that left D’Souza injured and in need of emergency care.

Soon after his return home, however, D’Souza says local social services workers came and threatened to take away the children. He’s convinced the restaurant owner filed the complaint as another intimidation ploy.

By this time, D’Souza and his wife were no longer in the country legally as the owner had canceled his H1-B visa. Since his situation occurred in 2003, there was no state law to cover the case. Ohio didn’t pass its current human trafficking laws until 2012.

But D’Souza continued to fight for his money and in court, finding solace in a sympathetic federal law enforcement agent who he says treated him like a human being and not just a witness.

He won his cases, but D’Souza says the restaurant owner declared bankruptcy thereby avoiding paying him back.

Still, he landed a job with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. D’Souza recently retired from there and started a nonprofit agency aimed at combatting human trafficking and helping victims.

His two sons Bradly and Rohan obtained permanent resident status on Valentine’s Day in 2014, the first time D’Souza says he truly felt free since coming to the U.S.

“For so long I was scared of Americans … but Americans saved my life,” D’Souza says.

Council’s work now

In 2015, Congress passed the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, setting up an interagency task force as well as the council on which D’Souza and Goud-Street sit.

The council consists of victims of human and sex trafficking, designed to advise the task force on issues facing victims, specifically for underserved demographics such as the elderly or those with handicaps.

After all he’s been through, D’Souza says “the most beautiful part” is how he’s treated when he attends functions in Washington and elsewhere.

“They truly respect us and even say ‘the Honorable Harold D’Souza,’ ” he says.

It will be the council’s first visit to Ohio since its inception, and D’Souza says the timing couldn’t be better. According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, there were more than 1,200 reports of possible human trafficking in Ohio in 2018 – the fourth-highest total in the U.S. – and 443 documented cases.

“Whatever we are doing here right now in Cincinnati, that will get into our annual report,” D’Souza says. “That has been my mission, vision and passion.

“I wanted to give back to the community. They should be safe. They should be happy.”

If you go:

The U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking is holding a public event in Cincinnati on Sunday from 7-8 p.m.

Sisters of Mount Notre Dame de Namur

Health Center, Amiens Hall Ground Floor

699 Columbia Ave., Cincinnati, OH 45215