A group of men who formerly participated in the Salvation Army’s rehabilitation programs have targeted the charity with a class action lawsuit under a federal human trafficking law, accusing the Salvation Army of improperly coercing hundreds of thousands of people enrolled in its adult rehab programs to essentially work for free under the guise of therapy.
The lawsuit was filed in Chicago federal court on Nov. 15 by named plaintiffs, Illinois residents Darrell Taylor and Kevin Lewis; Darrell Burkhart, of Michigan; and Leevertis Page, of Florida.
They are represented by attorneys David Fish and M. Nieves Bolaños, of the firm of Fish Potter Bolaños, of Chicago; Anna P. Prakash, Charles J. O’Meara, Caroline E. Bressman and Matthew C. Helland, of Nichols Kaster, of Minneapolis and San Francisco; and Lucy B. Bansal and Janet Herold, of Justice Catalyst Law, of New York.
David Fish
| Fish Potter Bolanos
The class action lawsuit takes aim at the Salvation Army’s Adult Rehabilitation Center program.
According to the Salvation Army’s website, the ARC offers participants 180-day “residential work-therapy programs providing spiritual, social, and emotional assistance to those who have lost the ability to cope with their problems and provide for themselves.”
The lawsuit, however, alleges the Salvation Army uses the ARC program to secure essentially free labor, to reduce its need to hire paid employees.
The complaint notes that many participants in the ARC program are referred to the Salvation Army by courts, as a condition of parole or probation for criminal offenses.
Others “walk in” the program, arriving by choice. These the complaint notes are those who are homeless or otherwise “economically vulnerable.”
The complaint accuses the Salvation Army of essentially leveraging ARC participants’ situations against them. The complaint notes the Salvation Army compels all participants to agree to allow the ARC staff to restrict their contact with the outside world, and sign over all of their possessions and prior means of support, including cell phones and government benefits, including food stamps and EBT cards, for the duration of their time in the program.
This, the complaint alleges, makes all participants completely dependent on the Salvation Army for all of their needs.
Further, the complaint asserts the Salvation Army works against those referred to the program by the courts by threatening to report their refusal to participate or poor performance to their probation officers and the courts, which could result in their return to prison.
The complaint further alleges participants are not paid wages for their work at Salvation Army thrift stores and other facilities. Instead, they are paid “gratuities” of $1-$25 per week. The complaint claims ARC participants are required to work 40 hours per week, often in physically demanding jobs.
“The Salvation Army is clear about the terms of the exchange the ARC workforce must make: if they want a bed in an ARC facility, they must work full-time for effectively zero wages in The Salvation Army’s commercial stores and warehouses, in physically demanding and often dangerous jobs,” the complaint said. “The Salvation Army therefore engages in a scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause its workers to believe that, if they do not perform the required labor, they will suffer serious harm including but not limited to financial instability, food insecurity, homelessness, and inability to obtain paid work.”
The complaint asserts the ARC program violates the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.
The plaintiffs seek to expand the action to potentially include anyone who has participated in the ARC program in the past 10 years, a number that could easily run into the hundreds of thousands of people. The complaint estimated 158,000 people participated in the ARC program nationwide in 2019 alone.
The plaintiffs asked the court to order the Salvation Army to pay unspecified damages under the TVPRA law, including punitive damages and attorney fees.
A spokesperson for the Salvation Army did not reply to a request for comment from the Cook County Record on Tuesday, Nov. 16.