Maid dumped at embassy gate in battered state
Ghazanfar Ali Khan | Arab News 
Women in shelter in Saudi Arabia who have suffered abuse and await trial, or deportation
RIYADH: An Asian housemaid was allegedly gang-raped by four men, including her employer, and then abandoned at her country’s embassy here earlier this week.
“The maid was raped by four people at the house of her Saudi employer,” said an embassy official, who asked his name and that of his embassy not be published. “The embassy is following the case seriously to ensure arrests of the rapists,” he added.
The victim, who is in her early 30s, is being cared for at the embassy’s temporary shelter for runaway maids. “The scars on her body suggest she was roughed up badly,” said the diplomat.
The maid was in a terrible state when this reporter visited her. “I can only identify two of them because they covered my face while raping me,” she told Arab News, adding that one of the attackers was her employer.
The woman said she was scrubbing the floor when the men overpowered her. She said she was thrown from a moving car outside the embassy late at night.
Verdict upheld
In another incident yesterday, a Sri Lankan maid who allegedly stole more than SR14,800, clothes and a watch from her employer in Dammam lost her appeal against a three-month jail sentence.
The 32-year-old maid evaded arrest for months, but her employer got suspicious when he drove her to the airport. “We searched her bags and found clothes that we thought had been lost at the dry cleaners, a gold watch and a substantial amount of money,” said a friend of the employer.
The employer alerted airport security and the maid was taken to a police station. She was subsequently convicted and sentenced. The maid lodged an appeal in a higher court, which upheld the original verdict yesterday.
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