Restaurant manager beat and forced a Black man to work without pay owes him more than $500,000

 

/// Attached is a mugshot of Bobby Paul Edwards to go with this A-wire story. Here's a proposed caption This undated photo provided by the J. Reuben Long Detention Center in Horry County, North Carolina shows Bobby Paul Edwards. Federal prosecutors said Edwards is charged with abusing and enslaving a mentally challenged employee at the restaurant he managed. Doc URL: http://elvisb.ap.org/News/Stories/CTCB-2017-Oct-12-000205/CTCB-2017-Oct-12-000205.docx Slug: BC-US - Slavery Allegation Headline: Man accused of enslaving mentally disabled cafeteria worker Summary: A South Carolina restaurant manager has been charged with abusing and enslaving a mentally challenged employee. News outlets report 52-year-old Bobby Paul Edwards of Conway pleaded not guilty Wednesday to one count of forced labor. Authorities say Edwards used threats and force, including beatings with a belt and burning with tongs used in hot grease, to force 39-year-old John Christopher Smith to work as a J&J Cafeteria cook from 2009 until 2014. Extended Headline: A South Carolina restaurant manager has been charged with abusing and enslaving a mentally challenged employee Editors Note: Eds: Version moved in previous cycle on state lines. Urgency: Non Urgent Junkline: Mkrlsflsichawyffwmbf Dateline: CONWAY, S.C. CONWAY, S.C. (AP) - A South Carolina restaurant manager has been ordered held without bond on charges of abusing and enslaving a mentally challenged employee, according to information released by federal authorities. Bobby Paul Edwards, 52, of Conway pleaded not guilty to one count of forced labor, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. Edwards used abuse and threats to force John Christopher Smith, 39, to work as a J&J Cafeteria cook from 2009 until 2014, authorities said. Court documents describe beatings with a belt, choking, slapping, punching with a closed fist and burning with tongs used in hot grease. Smith has been diagnosed with delayed cognitive development that results in intellectual functioning significantly below average. He filed a federal lawsuit in 2015 against Edwards and the restaurant owner, saying he wasn't paid or given time off or benefits. The lawsuit, which has not been resolved, also accused Edwards of repeated abuse, saying he hit Smith with objects including a frying pan and forced him Smith to work, to the point the man was so weak he had to be carried home. Saying some witnessed the alleged abuse, the lawsuit noted that Edwards went after Smith with a belt buckle for being too slow to replenish food items on the buffet line. "Plaintiff was heard crying like a child and yelling, 'No, Bobby, please!'" According to the suit, which accused the cafeteria's owner of knowing about the abuse but doing nothing to stop it. Edwards' attorney didn't respond to requests for comment. State assault charges against him are still pending. The indictment outlining the cartoons against Edwards was sealed last week by a federal magistrate, who has not released it to the public. Conway is about 10 miles (16 kilometers) northwest of Myrtle Beach.

A South Carolina man who was forced to work over 100 hours every week for years without pay and subjected to verbal and physical abuse was supposed to receive close to $ 273,000 in restitution after his former manager pleaded guilty.

But that initial amount was too low, an appellate court ruled in April. The man should have received more than double that amount - closer to $ 546,000 - from the manager to account for federal labor laws, according to the ruling.

John Christopher Smith was forced to work at a cafeteria in Conway without pay for years. His manager, Bobby Edwards, pleaded guilty to forced labor in 2018 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his abuse of Smith, a Black man who has intellectual disabilities.

A US District Court judge in 2019 ordered Edwards, who is White, to pay Smith around $ 273,000 in restitution, which represented Smith’s unpaid wages and overtime.

But the court “erred in failing to include liquidated damages” in the restitution, a provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act that would've doubled the amount of restitution Smith received, according to the April ruling from the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals based in Richmond, Virginia.

The Fair Labor Standards Act’s liquidated-damages provision holds that if failing to pay a worker’s wages on time is so detrimental to that worker’s “minimum standard of living,” then they should be paid double that amount, the Supreme Court decided in 1945.

“When an employer fails to pay those amounts, the employee suffers losses, which includes the loss of the use of that money during the period of delay,” the federal appeals court said.

The district court will now calculate the new amount Smith is owed.

CNN has reached out to the US Attorney’s Office in South Carolina and the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, which ordered the original restitution payment, for comment.

Smith endured years of abuse

Smith started working at the cafeteria as a part-time dishwasher when he was 12, according to the recent ruling. His first 19 years of employment there, when the restaurant was managed by other members of Edwards ’family, were paid.

But when Edwards took over the restaurant in 2009, Smith was moved into an apartment next to the restaurant and forced to work more than 100 hours every week without pay, according to the ruling.

“Edwards effected this forced labor by taking advantage of Jack's intellectual disability and keeping Jack isolated from his family, threatening to have him arrested, and verbally abusing him,” the ruling reads.

Smith feared Edwards, who once dipped metal tongs into grease and pressed them into Smith’s neck when Smith failed to quickly restock the buffet with fried chicken, the ruling says. Edwards also whipped Smith with his belt, punched him and beat him with kitchen pans, leaving Smith “physically and psychologically scarred,” according to the ruling.

But Smith also feared what might happen if he attempted to escape, he told CNN affiliate WPDE in 2017.

“I wanted to get out of there a long time ago. But I didn't have anyone I could go to, ”he told the affiliate. “I couldn’t go anywhere. I couldn’t see none of my family. ”

The ruling says an employee’s relative alerted authorities of the abuse in 2014, and the South Carolina Department of Social Services removed Smith from the restaurant that year.

“We are talking about enslavement here,” Abdullah Mustafa, then the president of the local chapter of the NAACP, said at the time.

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