CARLA B. ABDO-KATSIPIS
▶ FIELDWORK LOCATION: LEBANON
On March 27, 2016, Lebanese Internal Security Forces raided the Chez Maurice and Silver brothels in search of seventy-five Syrian women who had been brought across the Lebanese border and coerced into prostitution.1 Both establishments were run by the same group, whose senior traffickers were Maurice Jaajaa, a Lebanese national, and Imad Rihawi, a Syrian national.2 These women were trafficked during the Syrian Civil War and were brought to Lebanon under the pretext of either work or marriage. When the defendants were formally accused on April 16, 2016, it became clear that this would be the first ever case to test the 2011 law, No. 164, Punishment for the Crime of Trafficking in Persons,3 and it would be doing so under the backdrop of armed conflict. This case was heavily covered by the media, garnered significant public interest, and was the primary case study in my research on sex-trafficking of Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
I had completed the rigorous, full institutional review board (IRB) review process over the previous two months and had already been asked a lot of questions related to interviewing vulnerable populations, specifically those linked to criminal activity:
• How would I react to participants telling me about participation in former crime?
• How would I protect participants’ identities?
• Did I have a legal duty to report their testimony?
• How could I get the information I wanted and still be sensitive to the subject matter?
Some of my research had been inspired by Howard Becker’s study of the behaviors of drug addicts in his book Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. Working as a dance musician, Becker first interviewed fellow dance musicians who were marijuana addicts. These participants led him to others outside of the profession through personal referral. Becker’s method of collecting data was participant observation—he worked with the addicted musicians he studied.4
In contrast, I had no plans to participate in the industry of the interviewees. So I decided that the best way to gather information was through targeted interviews by referral. As Lee Ann Fujii indicates in Interviewing in Social Science Research: A Relational Approach, I wanted to appear nonthreatening, to actively listen, to treat the participants with respect no matter what, and to give participants the lead in the conversation.5 However, the practical aspect of finding people with access to the sex-trafficking ring was more uncertain than I liked, and I knew there was an element of chance in finding either traffickers or victims who were willing to speak with me. Approaching vulnerable populations was markedly different from any of my previous research on voting behavior. I was excited but anxious about the fact that I would have less control over this process than I had had in other research endeavors.
DEVELOPING A NETWORK
I began my research by developing an affiliation with the Arab Institute for Women at the Lebanese American University.6 Through their expertise and generous referral process, I began interviewing academics, journalists, attorneys, police, judges, and civil society activists; and I attended the public hearing of victim testimony. These were professional interviews, and those who agreed to be interviewed openly gave me their time and knowledge. Through this network, I learned that the trial would be held on July 7, 2017,7 and that the gallery was public. This would be my chance to see the legal process in action. I attended—unsure of what to expect. Would I hear victim testimony again? Would I meet traffickers here? What would the outcome be?
Having arrived early to the courtroom, only two men were present, one was dressed in a formal attorney’s cloak reserved exclusively for the courtroom. The attorney approached me and asked the purpose of my presence there. In broad strokes, I told him that I was a researcher interested in the Chez Maurice sex-trafficking case. He introduced himself as one of the defense attorneys in the case, volunteered to speak to me, and gave me his card and phone number. Good start, I thought. I will talk to him, and he can refer me to others.
Then Issam8 approached me.
INTERVIEWING SEX-TRAFFICKERS
Issam sat next to me and chatted about the weather and the day he was having. As the conversation progressed, he said he had overheard my conversation with the defense attorney. He indicated that he had worked in the Chez Maurice trafficking ring as a guard and, like the others accused of sex-trafficking in this case, was released on bail. He asked me questions about my intentions and learned that I was approaching this matter scholastically and without judgment. Hearing this, he said he wanted to share his experience, and he gave me some practical advice:
Look, what you are trying to research isn’t easy. Let me talk to you and find others who will. You won’t be able to get them to speak to you any other way, OK? We all went through a lot in prison, and we have a hard time trusting anyone. You might step on other people’s toes—I don’t want anything to happen to you.
Although he did not clarify what “anything happening to me” actually meant, I felt that this was a fair warning. No one in the sex-trafficking ring had a reason to trust me without someone to back me up, and poking around blindly could backfire. I thanked him for his support in my research, feeling both grateful and a little anxious as I did so. I reasoned that at least part of the rationale for Issam’s willingness to assist me in finding interviewees was to monitor how much access I had to information, but without him I would have very little access at all. Wasn’t access to traffickers what I wanted? But what was I really getting myself into? Could I trust him—after all, wasn’t he also accused of criminal activity? Had my fieldwork studies prepared me for this?
Shortly after Issam offered to assist me, the court gallery started to fill. Easily recognizable through media coverage, Imad Rihawi, one of the senior traffickers of the ring, sat down a few seats away on the same bench.
“Issam, is that … ” I asked.
“Yes, that’s him,” Issam responded before I could finish my sentence.
“Can I talk to him?”
“I really wouldn’t advise you to. We all have trust issues from prison, and I don’t think he will.”
“I don’t mean to push, but can you just ask him, please? If he says no, I won’t ask again.”
“OK, but I do not think he will agree.” Issam spoke to Rihawi, and came back to me, looking a bit nervous. “Carla, he agreed. Keep it short, don’t ask him tough questions, and don’t look him in the eye. He is extremely violent.”
Aren’t we in a public court gallery? I thought. What could he do? Before I could process this information further, Rihawi and Issam had exchanged seats. As instructed, I looked straight ahead and did not turn my head. I then asked him if he could tell me his narrative about the case.
“All of these are lies; someone has an interest in prosecuting me. I treat these girls better than people did where they came from.” Rihawi quickly turned his head, leaned into my physical space, and gave me a piercing glare that scared me badly. I ended the interview and thanked him for speaking to me. He returned to his spot, and Issam came back to sit next to me.
“How did it go?” Issam asked. I exhaled slowly, preparing to answer, when Issam said,
I thought so. Carla, again—let me figure out who you can speak to. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you seem really innocent. I know you have read about the case, but you don’t seem to fully realize what some of them are capable of.
Them, I thought. Does he perceive himself as being different? Is that why he wants to help me?
Privately, Issam discussed the possibility of conversations with other members of the ring, came back to me, and indicated that he had arranged two meetings with fellow sex-traffickers. Some were similarly accused of detaining victims; others were accused of both physically abusing and detaining victims. Both meetings were slated for only a few hours later in the day. The first meeting was with female traffickers, and the second with male traffickers. He would accompany me to the meeting with the male traffickers, but I would be on my own with the women. Issam arranged for both meetings to be in separate public places.9 “So that everyone is comfortable,” he said.
I had imagined the process of speaking to the accused traffickers being in a quiet room reserved for research at my university. However, one thing had become clear to me—they would speak to me, but on their terms. I would have to be flexible about this.
During my meeting with the female traffickers, most of the women began by indicating complete innocence on their part as well as that of their senior traffickers—Imad Rihawi in particular. Seemingly primed, they said that the victims had come willingly, and they unpacked aspects of their defense before I started to ask questions. As the conversation progressed over the course of two hours, the women spoke more candidly about their work, largely as guards, in the sex-trafficking ring.10 Toward the end, an admission that they too had been trafficked as minors surfaced, and one woman gave me a clear-cut complete confession. After wrapping up my meeting with them, thanking them for their time and honesty, and reassuring them of anonymity, I made my way to the meeting with the male traffickers.
Issam was already there, and as he introduced me to the men, I found that he was right—I needed someone on the inside to vouch for me and would not get candid answers otherwise. Unlike the female traffickers, the men had quite a few questions for me, and Issam heavily shielded me from most of them. He also sat next to me the entire time. He seemed a little worried about my safety around the male traffickers.
“So, Carla—where are you from? What is your last name?” asked Faudel,11 one of Issam’s colleagues.
“Don’t ask her that,” Issam answered—before I could. He did not know the answers to those questions either, but it became clear to me that he did not want my identifiable information revealed to anyone in the ring.
“Why are you interested in this case?” asked Salim, another trafficker who had agreed to participate.12
“She is doing research on it and wants to hear what we have to say,” Issam answered, once again before I could.
“Research for what? For whom? Issam, you’re an idiot! Why do you trust her so much? How well do you know her? How do you know that everything you say won’t be all over the news by tomorrow? What do you know about her, anyway?” Faudel raised his voice with each question, and Issam responded in a surprisingly neutral tone.
“Stop screaming, you’re upsetting her! Can’t you tell she just wants to talk? Besides, why did you come? You talk to her and tell me why I trust her!” He turned to me and said, “I’m sorry, we all have trust issues from prison—don’t panic, he didn’t mean to yell.”
Faudel looked me in the eye and apologized for raising his voice. I reminded him that I only wanted to know what happened, and that anything he said would remain anonymous. He then took a deep breath and began telling me about how much money he made, how long he had worked for the sex-trafficking ring, his role as a guard, the duration of his shifts, and other matters. As he and Issam spoke with me candidly, so did the other men in the group. Unlike the female traffickers, none of the men spoke in defense of their senior traffickers—or even in defense of themselves. I strongly suspected that this was a function of Issam’s presence. Not only had Issam vouched for me, but the other men knew he had already spoken to me about sex-trafficking; there was no use engaging in either defense or denial. This meeting also took approximately two hours. I thanked them for their time, their candor, and reiterated my promise of anonymity.
I was elated with the openness that both groups displayed. However, I reminded myself not to get too excited. I had to think about matters of safety—not only theirs but also mine. Both groups were talking to me in public—couldn’t I have been seen, and if so, couldn’t I have been followed? I didn’t know for sure, but I wanted to take precautions. I took a bus to a town located in the opposite direction from where I lived and spent two hours milling around in a random restaurant there. Then I took another bus to a secondary town, spent an hour or so in their clothing shops, took a taxi to a third town (neighboring my own), and then walked the rest of the way home.
By the time I arrived home, I felt that I had taken appropriate precautions. Fortunately, Issam had shielded me from all questions about my identity except for my first name. I did not feel that any of the people I spoke to had enough information to put me in danger. Mindful of their safety as I typed my notes, I made sure to exclude information concerning their names, nationalities, regions of origin, the locations of the interviews, and only indicated their testimony through the use of a pseudonym.
I called the defense attorney a few days later and asked for a meeting. He said he was busy and that he would prefer not to speak to me anymore. I told him I understood and hung up.
As I continued my research, I asked myself about Issam’s motivation in helping me and why his fellow traffickers were willing to participate. Everyone had reported the experience of ostracization due to the charges. By speaking to me, they had someone willing to listen to their story with the promise of anonymity—and without judgment. It was through this process that I learned the full value of attentive listening.
This research project taught me a valuable lesson. If I wanted to interview vulnerable people, I needed to get someone to vouch for me, adapt to the needs of my subjects, and be flexible about the logistics. Above all, I needed to listen actively and to be mindful of their safety as well as my own.
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Carla B. Abdo-Katsipis is visiting assistant professor of government in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University.
PUBLICATIONS TO WHICH THIS FIELDWORK CONTRIBUTED:
• Abdo-Katsipis, Carla B. “The Rise in Sex-Trafficking Among Syrian Refugees and Its Legal Challenges” (Article under review).
• ——. Victims and Perpetrators: Women in Conflict (in preparation).
NOTES
2. As of publication, Maurice Jaajaa is still at large, and Imad Rihawi has been arrested. Document of Accusation No. 2211, 2016.
3. Document of Accusation No. 2211, 2016.
4. Howard Saul Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), 83–85.
5. Lee Ann Fujii, Interviewing in Social Science Research: A Relational Approach (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2017), 1–8.
6. During the time I was affiliated with them, the name of the organization was the Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World.
7. The trial was postponed during this hearing.
8. Issam is a pseudonym for a lower-level trafficker who was arrested in the Chez Maurice case and was charged with detaining the victims. He agreed to speak to me under conditions of anonymity.
9. Owing to the promise of anonymity to the interviewees, I cannot reveal the exact locations of our meetings.
10. These women were mostly charged with detaining victims.
11. Faudel is a pseudonym for a lower-level trafficker who was also arrested in the case. He was charged with detaining victims. He agreed to speak to me under conditions of anonymity.
12. Salim is a pseudonym for a lower-level trafficker who was also arrested in the case. He was charged with detaining victims. He agreed to speak to me under conditions of anonymity.