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Article

15 Dec 2011

Author:
Cam Simpson, Bloomberg

Victoria’s Secret Revealed in African Child Labor

Clarisse Kambire’s nightmare rarely changes. It’s daytime. In a field of cotton plants that burst with purple and white flowers, a man in rags towers over her, a stick raised above his head...The man ordering her awake is the same one who haunts the 13-year-old girl’s sleep...the farmer she labors for in a...cotton field...This harvest is Clarisse’s second. Cotton from her first went from her hands onto the trucks of a Burkina Faso program that deals in cotton certified as fair trade. The fiber from that harvest then went to factories in India and Sri Lanka, where it was fashioned into Victoria’s Secret underwear...An executive for Victoria’s Secret’s parent company says the amount of cotton it buys from Burkina Faso is minimal, but it takes the child-labor allegations seriously. “They describe behavior contrary to our company’s values and the code of labor and sourcing standards we require all of our suppliers to meet,” Tammy Roberts Myers, vice president of external communications for Limited Brands Inc., said in a statement...“We are vigorously engaging with stakeholders to fully investigate this matter.” [also refers to Starbucks, Wal-Mart]