'Modern-Day Slavery' Prompts Rescue Efforts

Halla forbade Muka from bathing because "she did not want my germs in the shower," Muka wrote. Halla often slapped her and kicked her while wearing boots and shoes.

Once, Halla noticed a scratch on the baby's nose. "She pulled a knife out of the drawer and demonstrated pulling the knife across her throat as if to slice it," Muka wrote. "While she was doing this, she looked at me and said that if a scratch occurred again, she would kill me."

Halla confiscated her passport and told her "bad people" would hurt her if she ever left, according to Muka's statement. Muka said she imagined government officials tracking her down.

"I cried every night," said Muka, her face wet with tears as she recounted her story in self-taught English. "I'm praying five times a day."

The breaking point came when Halla "pull my hair, and that's when she scratch my arms and dig with her fingernails," drawing blood, Muka said.

A few days later, Muka fled to a nearby apartment building, where she sat in the lobby until a sympathetic tenant took her in. His daughter downloaded an Indonesian dictionary from the Internet so they could communicate. Break the Chain helped her obtain special immigration status as a victim of trafficking.

Department of Homeland Security immigration officials were able to track the diplomat, but he had returned to the United Arab Emirates, according to an investigator who said he was not authorized to be quoted by name. They could not locate Halla, who used several aliases, the investigator said. Abdulla Alsaboosi, a spokesman for the United Arab Emirates Embassy in Washington, said that the diplomat retired and that the embassy was unable to locate him. The Post was also unable to locate Halla or the diplomat.

Muka eventually found a one-bedroom apartment to share with three other Indonesian women and a job as a nanny for an American family. Under the terms of her visa, she is not allowed to leave the United States for another two years, so she calls her children every Saturday night.

Who Pays for Immunity?

Even when law enforcement officials learn of mistreatment, they can face major obstacles if the employer is a diplomat because many have full immunity, meaning they usually cannot be arrested, prosecuted or sued. Advocacy groups estimate that one third of their domestic servitude cases involve diplomats with immunity.

That was true in the case of a 44-year-old Indian woman who worked for nearly a year as a live-in maid for a senior Asian diplomat in Washington. During her stay at the diplomat's home in Potomac, the woman said, she was abused mentally and sometimes physically by the diplomat's wife, whom she addressed as Madam.

The woman, who refused to be named because she feared retribution, said she worked 16 to 18 hours a day, seven days a week. She said the diplomat sent one payment of $100 to her home in India, the equivalent of 18 cents an hour.

"This Madam, she gave me so much trouble," the maid said in a recent interview. "I didn't do any wrong but all the time she is screaming at me, screaming very bad words, so much bad words."

The maid sought refuge at St. Raphael Catholic Church in Potomac, and the church's outreach coordinator kept the woman's story in a journal. One entry described how the wife pulled her hair and "punched her on the forehead . . . also screaming and cursing."

The maid eventually fled the diplomat's home after she fell ill, but the diplomat kept her passport and belongings, according to Break the Chain. The group said that the woman had grounds to sue for back wages but that the diplomat was protected by immunity. After months of negotiations with the State Department and the embassy, the group obtained her passport and belongings.