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Affidavit details virtual slavery
Saudi man accused of sexual assaults


By Hector Gutierrez, Rocky Mountain News
June 14, 2005

An Indonesian immigrant was paid less than $58 a month for working seven days a week during her four-year stay with a couple in Aurora, according to an FBI affidavit released Monday.

The alleged victim also was sexually assaulted by Homaiden Al-Turki, who brought her to the United States when she was 17 or 18, according to the document. The young woman, who did domestic work, never received a day off or vacation from the time she moved in with Al-Turki and his wife, Sarah Khonaizan, according to the affidavit.

Al-Turki, 36, and Khonaizan, 35, who are from Saudi Arabia, are facing an assortment of federal and state charges accusing them of detaining the immigrant virtually as a slave from September 2000 to November 2004.

Al-Turki allegedly fondled and assaulted the young woman at least one time a week for a year until federal agents broke up the operation, according to the FBI affidavit.

Most of the attacks occurred at night and sometimes took place when Al-Turki's wife was out of the city, an FBI agent wrote in the federal court papers.

The document accuses Al-Turki of pinning the young woman against a kitchen wall and trying to kiss her. Al-Turki told her that if she tried to run away the police would get her because of her expired visa, according to the FBI.

A woman who had befriended the Indonesian woman had learned that she was arrested by FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents in November.

The witness had invited the young woman to stay with her in February after her arrest. It was at that time that the Indonesian woman told her friend that Al-Turki had raped and groped her, the FBI wrote.

The young woman and the witness then reported the alleged sexual assaults to federal authorities and Aurora police. Al-Turki was arrested on June 1 and charged with sexual assault in Arapahoe County.

According to the FBI, the young woman allegedly told her friend that she had missed her family and wanted to return to Indonesia, but that the couple would not let her return.

The young woman told the friend that Khonaizan always held her Indonesian passport, even well after it had expired. Al-Turki eventually stopped the young woman from having contact with her friend after she kept asking him about the alleged victim's well-being, the FBI wrote.

Al-Turki and the witness had been friends, and Al-Turki previously had allowed the Indonesian woman to stay with the witness, the document said.

In interviews with the FBI and ICE agents, the Indonesian woman allegedly said that she worked every day during her four years with no regular days off and no vacations. She said she woke up at 6 a.m. and prepared breakfast for the family, according to the FBI.

She allegedly was required to wait in her basement living quarters while the family ate, and after the children left for school her duties allegedly included cleaning the kitchen, bathrooms, bedrooms, the floors and the first and second floors.

At 2 p.m. she allegedly prepared the afternoon meal for the family. She allegedly did the laundry twice a week and washed the vehicles. On a typical day she allegedly finished her work at 6 p.m.

The young woman allegedly told agents she never left the house unaccompanied other than to retrieve mail, take out the trash, do yard work and wash the cars.

Federal agents calculated that she was compensated $3,300 or about $57.29 per month, or $1.91 a day.