Two of the victims were in court, including one teenage male who wrote an impassioned statement, thanking the defendant for bringing him to the United States and giving him new opportunities, but at the same time admonishing him for subjecting him to years of abuse.
"You had no respect for me. ... I wake up with nightmares. You said that you would kill me with your bare hands when I was only a child ... I pray that one day you will be able to change your ways," the boy, A.K., wrote in his statement.
"You are an evil person. The only person you can be upset with is yourself."
The defendant is Jean-Claude "Kodjo'' Toviave, a Togo native who was featured in a Detroit Free Press report last year about human trafficking. He appeared to want to make some sort of statement, but instead left the courtroom in silence.
His only words to the judge involved explaining why he was in Africa years ago: to visit his sick mother.
U.S. District Judge Arthur Tarnow gave Toviave the maximum punishment that prosecutors sought, telling the defendant he wasn't sure he understood "how seriously wrong what you did is."
"I am not an expert in Togo, but I have lived in other parts of the world ... and I've never come across a civilization or society that allows the beating of children to make a point," Tarnow said in court.
"Using broomsticks or others devices is just wrong."
A federal jury deliberated for less than a day last October before convicting Toviave, a former University of Michigan janitor and part-time tennis instructor, on four counts of forced labor.
During the six-day trial, the jury heard from the four victims, who testified that Toviave regularly beat them with broomsticks, a toilet plunger, sticks, ice scrapers and phone chargers if they failed to obey orders to do their house chores. Toviave also withheld food and sleep as punishment, they testified.
They said the abuse spanned nearly five years in their Ypsilanti home, which Toviave got through Habitat for Humanity, records show.
According to court records and courtroom testimony, Toviave, a native of Togo, brought the four into the United States by giving them passports with false names and dates of birth. He also falsely claimed they were his own biological children and enrolled the three youngest - now aged 21, 20 and 15 - in a public middle school.
According to court records, the victims detailed the years of abuse in journals, which police confiscated, and reported the abuse to counselors, triggering an investigation. Toviave was arrested in May 2011.
The victims testified they were forced to do all of the cooking and housecleaning for Toviave, as well as iron his suits, shine his shoes, wash and vacuum his car and clean the home of one of his friends.
Federal prosecutors argued that Toviave deserved a stiff punishment because he was a father figure to these children, and he abused their trust.
One of the victims had a message for Toviave, writing: "I pray for you everyday."
