(Bloomberg)
SWEATSHOP: To make its sexy undergarments, Victoria’s Secret reportedly used cotton picked by young children working long hours. (
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Victoria has another secret.
Despite labels that certified its sleek panties and racy thongs were made from “pesticide-free, 10 percent rain-fed cotton,” the lingerie giant was using fiber picked from farms that relied on abused child laborers, according to a shocking new report.
“Good for women. Good for the children who depend on them” was the tagline Victoria’s Secret used to market a special lingerie line in 2008 that the company boasted was made from “fair-trade” cotton.
The company even went so far as to boast that each purchase improved the lives of women and children in Burkina Faso, the destitute African nation where the cotton is picked.
But according to Bloomberg News, about 25 million of the garments produced for a Valentine’s Day line in 2009 under that campaign were made from cotton plucked in the searing sun by undernourished children who were beaten with branches.
Much of the report is based on a 2008 never-before-published study indicating widespread abuse and tales of horror throughout the farming region that Victoria’s Secret either ignored or never saw.
The abuse is described in detail by a 13-year-old girl named Clarisse Kambiré, a foster child who ends up in the care of an abusive farmer who, like most of his neighbors, is too poor to afford the ox and plow best suited for the grueling work of field preparation.
“It’s very, very hard,’’ Clarisse told Bloomberg News, ”and he forces me to do it.’’
And if she slows down from exhaustion, “he comes to beat me,’’ she said, describing the lashes she receives across her back with a tree branch.
With only her muscles and a battered wooden hoe, Clarisse helped dig more than 500 rows to plant the seed that will yield the cotton she will later pick by hand.
Although the cotton she picks is pesticide-free, it doesn’t come without its cost.
Victoria’s Secret can claim its products are chemical free because children like Clarisse spend days hauling buckets of manure compost on their heads about half a mile to fields from a pit they help maintain.
Bending at the waist, she uses her bare hands to spread the compost around each of the thousands of plants.
“It’s very painful,’’ Clarisse says, “because I have to keep doing it until he tells me I can stop.’’
A spokeswoman for Victoria’s Secret parent company Limited Brands Inc. said executives were outraged by the charges.
“We take these allegations regarding cotton farming in Burkina Faso very seriously,” said Limited Brands spokeswoman Tammy Roberts Myers.
“Our standards specifically prohibit child labor. We are vigorously engaging with stakeholders to fully investigate this matter.”