Child Slaves

©ROMANO/Stolen Childhoods

Owners prefer young girls as laborers because they're obedient.

Hard Labor

©ROMANO/Stolen Childhoods

Heat, dust and the deafing noise of the rock grinder produce a hellish workplace.

Stolen Childhood

© ROMANO/Stolen Childhoods

"I started working in a stone quarry when I was ten. A lot of children worked there and they would get hurt all the time. If we got hurt, they never gave us medicine."

- Kaushalya Kumari, age 15

Tombstone Marble

© ROMANO/Stolen Childhoods

"The children in that quarry may be invisible in our ordinary life but they affect our life. I don’t think that any of us would feel comfortable being buried under a tombstone made by slave-child labor. But one of India’s biggest exports to the United States is tombstone marble. And it comes from quarries where children work."

- Pharis Harvey, International Labor Rights Fund

Modern Slavery

©2000 ROMANO/Stolen Childhoods

Orissa, India
The girls labor to pay-off small loans incurred by their families. They’re enslaved in a system of debt-bondage from which few escape.

Injury

©2000 ROMANO/Stolen Childhoods

Orissa, India
Injuries are common and medical care is nonexistent.

Heat

©ROMANO/Stolen Childhoods

Orissa, India
In heat reaching 130ºF (54ºC) the young girls wait their turn at the rock grinder

Dust

©ROMANO/Stolen Childhoods

Orissa, India
A girl covers her mouth from the rock dust. Without protective masks the particulates in the air cause silicosis.

The Supervisor

©2000 ROMANO/Stolen Childhoods

Orissa, India
Girls and women do the work as a lone man supervises.

A Ton a Day

©ROMANO/Stolen Childhoods

Orissa, India
All day long girls and women carry rock to the grinder. Lifting more than a ton each day, the work is literally back-breaking.