Colorado & Denver News

AURORA, Colo. (AP) ― An Indonesian housekeeper who spoke no English was fondled, raped and held as "an invisible prisoner, in a house right here in our community," a prosecutor said Wednesday in the state trial of her employer.

The defense countered that the 24-year-old woman made up stories about sexual assault to get out of trouble with federal authorities for overstaying her visa.

Homaidan Al-Turki, 37, of Saudi Arabia, is charged with two counts of kidnapping, 12 counts of sexual assault, extortion, theft and false imprisonment. He could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.

Prosecutors and FBI agents have said Al-Turki and his wife, Sarah Khonaizan, brought the woman to Colorado to care for their five children and to cook and clean for the family. An affidavit said she spent four years with the family, sleeping on a mattress on the basement floor and getting less than $2 a day.

She was arrested on immigration charges in November 2004, placed in a safe house and later reported the alleged assaults to a woman who had befriended her.

The Associated Press is not identifying the woman because of the sexual assault allegations.

In her opening statement, prosecutor Ann Tomsic told jurors the housekeeper tried but failed to fight off the alleged rapes and did not know where to turn for help.

Tomsic said the woman was required to wear traditional Muslim clothing covering her entire body, including her face and hands.

"She doesn't know how to get help. She's completely trapped, she's completely invisible," Tomsic said.

The slight, soft spoken woman hired by the family in Saudi Arabia in 1999 when she was 17, testified the entire afternoon how she took the job expecting to earn minimum wage so she could help her family in Java. Speaking through an interpreter, she described how she would have to clean, do laundry, vacuum, take out the garbage, and help trim the grass outdoors while wearing a head scarf, veil and full-length gowns.

Though she cooked, she rarely ate with the family, the woman testified.

Defense lawyer Dan Recht told jurors the woman never mentioned sexual abuse in at least a dozen interviews with the FBI, the Indonesian Consulate and safe house counselors, even though she was asked.

"She made up that story because that's what the FBI wanted to hear," Recht said. As a result, she avoided deportation, got her visa renewed and was paid $64,000 in back wages by Al-Turki and Khonaizan, Recht said.

Recht said the woman was treated like a member of the family by Al-Turki and Khonaizan, who are Saudi citizens and observed Muslim traditions, including separating women from unrelated men.

Recht said the woman chose to follow those traditions and chose to sleep on a mattress in the basement because she could dress casually and act as she wanted there.

Recht said issues of the woman's clothing and the fact that her pay was withheld until her employment ended were "cultural differences and not crimes."

Khonaizan, 35, pleaded guilty to state and federal charges of theft and harboring an illegal immigrant and faces up to a year in prison when she is sentenced in July and August. She has agreed to return to Saudi Arabia after completing her sentences, her lawyers have said.

Al-Turki also faces an October federal trial on charges of forced labor, document servitude and harboring an illegal immigrant.

Al-Turki, a linguist, worked at a Denver publishing and translating company and is a doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado. He is free on bond.

The woman was arrested in Nov. 2004 and eventually placed at a safe house in Boulder. In early April 2005, she reported the alleged assaults to a woman who had befriended her.

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