Former U.s. Diplomat Again Found Liable for Sexually Enslaving a Housekeeper
Former U.Due south. diplomat again found liable for sexually enslaving a housekeeper
The U.Due south. Diplomatic mission in Yemen, where Linda Howard was posted in 2007. (Mohamed Al-Sayaghi/Reuters)
Rachel Weiner
A sometime U.S. diplomat has for the 2nd time been found liable for enslaving and sexually trafficking a housekeeper while posted at the U.South. Diplomatic mission in Yemen.
A jury in federal court in Alexandria, Va., agreed Monday that the former envoy, Linda Howard, and her Australian husband, Russell Howard, forced an Ethiopian maid into sexual slavery in 2007, repeatedly raping her. Linda Howard was ordered to pay $iii million in amercement to the at present 30-twelvemonth-quondam adult female, identified only equally Sarah Roe, who lives in Virginia.
V years ago the couple were found liable in the same courtroom for trafficking another Ethiopian housekeeper in 2008. They were ordered to pay her $3.3 1000000. However, the couple had already fled from Arlington, Va., to Australia and contested the judgment in that location. The case was settled in 2015.
Linda Howard left the State Section in 2013; her husband died in 2012. She denied the new allegations and argued that Roe could not sue for civil damages nether a homo trafficking constabulary that did not laissez passer until 2008.
According to court filings, Roe began working for the Howards in Sanaa, Yemen, in 2007, when Linda Howard was a Foreign Service officeholder in the U.Southward. Embassy'southward Data Programme Middle. Roe was promised a monthly salary of $150 every bit well every bit visa help, medical handling, back up for her daughter and the opportunity to follow the family to Linda Howard's adjacent posting in Federal republic of germany.
She alleged that she was told she must move in with the family, selling the possessions she had acquired in Republic of yemen, and proceed Russell Howard happy while his wife was at work.
[A millionaire, a hotel maid, and an abort after the inauguration for sex abuse]
Roe claims that she was told to clothing a skimpy uniform that Linda Howard sewed herself just refused. Russell Howard took her to a mall and bought lingerie, a thong and ii miniskirts, which she said she also refused to wear once she realized that was his intention.
From early, Roe alleged, both husband and wife would grope her and need that she have sex activity with them. Shortly, she said, Russell Howard was raping her twice a twenty-four hour period, telling her it was office of her job. When she protested, she said, he would hit her and throw things at her and threaten to put her in jail. Linda Howard, in Roe'southward business relationship, sometimes joined in. She alleged that Russell Howard dragged her to the infirmary so she could be fitted with an IUD against her will.
The couple would show her explicit photographs of previous housekeepers, she said, shouting, "She did it, why tin can't you?"
Roe was closely monitored and seldom allowed to leave the house alone. She was also forced to piece of work 85 to ninety hours a week, according to her complaint. The Howards took her passport, she said, and did not renew her visa as promised. According to Roe, the couple had gotten the hubby of another quondam housekeeper put in prison.
"I cried all the time," Roe wrote in an affidavit.
Along with the threat of retribution, Roe said she was afraid of the social and legal consequences in Ethiopia of being raped by a woman.
"It is . . . shameful and illegal to have any homosexual contact in my country," she wrote in an affirmation to the courtroom. "It does not matter that I was an unwilling victim of Linda Howard'southward sexual advances; they would be viewed just the aforementioned by my family unit and friends and by the authorities."
Afterward about seven months, she says Russell Howard became enraged by her connected resistance to his sexual assaults and threw her out of the firm. She said she plant a identify to stay through an acquaintance at the diplomatic mission. Three or four days later, she said Linda Howard helped her find a job at a eating house in the chemical compound. Roe believes she did so to go along her silent.
Roe's allegations closely runway those of the Jane Doe, who won a civil accommodate against the Howards in 2012. Doe traveled with the couple from Yemen to Linda Howard's adjacent posting in Tokyo. She as well alleged that Russell Howard repeatedly raped her, that Linda Howard told her to go on him happy, and that she was isolated and threatened. After she fled in the middle of the night for dwelling, Russell Howard followed her and had charges filed against her in Ethiopia, she declared.
"The law-breaking, involving sexual assaults, forced labor, and trafficking is particularly depraved," U.South. District Guess Liam O'Grady wrote at the time.
Attorneys for Howard and Roe did not immediately return requests for comment.
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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/former-us-diplomat-again-found-liable-for-repeatedly-raping-housekeeper/2017/07/31/977d31a8-7602-11e7-8839-ec48ec4cae25_story.html#:~:text=Linda%20Howard%20was%20ordered%20to,to%20pay%20her%20%243.3%20million.
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