A woman was recently sentenced to 140 months in prison after using two Nigerian immigrants as personal unpaid servants in her luxury home in Atlanta, Georgia. A few days later, two Ukrainian brothers were convicted of smuggling desperate villagers into the United States to work long hours, cleaning retail stores and office buildings at little or no pay. The prosecuting U.S. attorney in Philadelphia, Daniel Velez, said it was "modern-day slavery. It's hiding in plain sight." However, according to a woman who lived through the racial prejudice, segregation and slavery in post-World War II Europe, the slavery crisis in the modern world is far greater than that. "Anyone who thinks slavery died when America abolished it in the 1800s has a shock coming to them," said Lucia Mann, whose mother was a sex slave and a WWII concentration camp survivor. Mann, a former journalist and author of RENTED SILENCE (www.RentedSilence.com), a novel about slavery and racial prejudice based on her life experiences and those of other persecuted souls she witnessed says, "According to the United Nations, there are more than 27 million slaves worldwide, which are more than twice the number of those who were enslaved over the 400 years that transatlantic slavers trafficked humans to work in the Americas. Many are forced into prostitution while others are used as unpaid labourers used to manufacture goods many of us buy in the U.S. In fact, it's almost impossible to buy clothes or goods any more without inadvertently supporting the slave trade. "Mann said that the crisis extends far greater than in the African and Asian nations typically associated with slavery or indentured servitude.

Lucia Mann is Sicilian-bred, born in British Colonial South Africa in the wake of WWII. She is a citizen of Britain and Canada who recently applied for a U.S. Green Card because she believes she is an American at heart. She was educated in London, England and retired from freelance journalism in 1998. After suffering from racial prejudice most of her early life because she was part Italian and part South African, she saw and felt firsthand the pain and suffering of those who were thought to be inferior because of the color of their skin. Her mission is to end prejudice and slavery now and in the future.Visit Lucia Mann on-line at www.luciamann.com.

Lucia Mann is also the founder of The Modern Day Slavery Reporting Center at www.mdsrc.org.