Victoria Secret's cotton picked by kids

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- U.S. lingerie giant Victoria's Secret used fiber picked by abused child laborers in its certified organic, fair-trade undies, a Bloomberg News report said.

The report said about 25 million of the garments produced for a Valentine's Day line in 2009 were made from cotton picked by underfed, underage workers who were beaten with branches in Burkina Faso, the poor African nation where the cotton was picked.

The abuse is detailed by 13-year-old Clarisse Kambire, a foster child who wound up with an abusive farmer who was too poor to afford the animals and implements suited for prepping the fields -- so she did it when she was 12.

"It's very, very hard," Clarisse told Bloomberg, "and he forces me to do it."

If she fell asleep or slowed down, she said he "comes to beat me" across her back with a tree branch.

Georges Guebre, leader of National Federation of Burkina Cotton Producers of the country's organic and fair-trade program -- and Victoria's Secret's partner -- co-sponsored a 2008 study suggesting hundreds, possibly thousands, of children could be exploited on organic and fair-trade farms, Bloomberg said.

Victoria's Secret, the largest segment of the Columbus, Ohio-based Limited Brands Inc., said it never saw the report.

"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, said in a statement.

"Our standards specifically prohibit child labor," she said. "We are vigorously engaging with stakeholders to fully investigate this matter."