Evelyn Chumbow Victim Of Human Trafficking in U.S Tells Her Story

For a girl from Cameroon, the idea of America was seen only through a television screen. America was a dream where she could marry the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
“The way we see America in Africa, oh my God, it’s like heaven,” said Evelyn Chumbow, a survivor of domestic labor trafficking. “You would have never told me I would see a homeless person or I would be enslaved in America. I would never, ever [have] thought that.”
Chumbow was between 10 and 12 years old, according to court documents, when Theresa Mubang, an American citizen originally from Cameroon who is now 52, brought her to Silver Spring, after promising Chumbow’s family that she would receive a good education.

“But that’s not what happened when I got here,” said Chumbow, now 29.

According to federal court documents, Chumbow said Mubang forced her to cook, clean and care for her children without payment or schooling and routinely beat her. She’d strike Chumbow with the heel of a shoe or a metal broom, and she used a white plastic television cable to whip the girl’s hands or back until she bled, the documents say.

“Sometimes, when she was tired of beating me up, I had to stand up in her bedroom from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. I stand up there really straight, no sleep,” Chumbow said in an interview.

Mubang, now in prison, did not respond to a letter requesting comment.
It was years before Chumbow escaped. Because of isolation from the outside world, Chumbow says she had lost a sense of time and did not know her exact age when she first left Mubang.

A stay with an aunt did not work out. Chumbow eventually found a church and a Catholic charity that alerted authorities. At 17, Chumbow said, she was placed in foster care.

A federal jury in Maryland convicted Mubang in 2004 of holding a juvenile for a term of involuntary servitude and harboring a juvenile for financial gain. In 2005, she was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison. She is scheduled for release in 2021.

Meanwhile, Chumbow has earned U.S. citizenship and her associate degree and is finishing her bachelor’s degree in homeland security at University of Maryland, University College.

Chumbow speaks to groups internationally about long-term services for human trafficking survivors.

“I am an advocate now. I’m using my experience and I’m teaching other people,” she said. “Yes we are survivors, but also we’re above that. We’re also human beings. We are the abolishers of the modern day slavery, and we have to work together.”
Maryland Reporter