Arapahoe County – Attorneys for a Saudi Arabian man on Wednesday began their dissection of an Indonesian nanny’s allegations that he raped her and held her against her will for four years in Aurora.
After two days of testimony by the 24-year-old woman in Arapahoe County District Court, defense attorney Marci Gilligan attacked her credibility, pointing out various contradictions.
Speaking softly and slowly through an Indonesian interpreter, the woman admitted lying about her age in 1999 in order to leave Java and find a domestic servant’s job in Saudi Arabia. When she was 16, she told an employment agency she was 20.
Upon questioning by Gilligan, the woman admitted that her Indonesian passport lists her birthdate in 1968, rather than her actual birthdate of April 20, 1982.
The woman traveled to Saudi Arabia in 1999, where she began working for the family of Homaidan Al-Turki, a linguistics doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The man’s wife and five children brought the nanny with them to Aurora in September 2000. The FBI got a tip from the Arab community that the nanny was being held against her will and raided the home in November 2004. Al-Turki was charged with kidnapping, theft and a dozen counts of sexual assault.
Al-Turki’s wife, Sarah Khonaizan, pleaded guilty this year to various charges in both federal and state courts in exchange for avoiding a jail sentence. She agreed to be deported.
Although the nanny recounted to prosecutors early in the trial details and conversations that allegedly occurred during the sexual assaults, on cross-examination she frequently couldn’t recall entire conversations with investigators. During an interview with a Department of Labor investigator to determine her back pay, the nanny said she worked seven days a week for Al-Turki. She said she worked for other families during vacations, claiming 17 hours a day for one and 15 hours a day for another.
“I don’t remember,” she said Wednesday. “I included playing with the children in my working hours.”
She had agreed to work in the U.S. for $150 a month, plus room and board. But after Al-Turki was charged, she negotiated a settlement with him through the Department of Labor for $64,000, or slightly more than $1,300 a month.
Defense attorneys contend that the sexual assaults never occurred, that the nanny brought them up after 12 FBI interviews over six months. They claim she made up the assaults in response to pressure from the FBI, which investigated Al-Turki as a possible terrorist.
Staff writer Mike McPhee can be reached at 303-820-1409 or mmcphee@denverpost.com.
