Arapahoe County – Prosecutors accused a Saudi Arabian man of imprisoning his Indonesian nanny for four years in his Aurora home, sexually assaulting her on a weekly basis and rendering her invisible to the outside world, but defense attorneys said the case is built on lies and cultural misunderstandings.
Jurors heard closing arguments Thursday in the roughly two-week trial of Homaidan Al-Turki, a 37-year-old linguistics doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He faces up to life in prison if convicted of kidnapping, sexual assault and other charges.
Jurors will continue deliberating this morning.
On Thursday, Al-Turki sat stoically at the defense table.
In a seat behind prosecutors sat Al-Turki’s 24-year-old accuser, wearing a purple head scarf and weeping as Chief Deputy District Attorney Ann Tomsic presented the prosecution’s case.
Tomsic said the woman thought she was helping her family by taking a servant job in Saudi Arabia that would earn up to $150 a month. Instead, Tomsic said, Al-Turki took the woman with his family to the U.S. and refused to pay her, kept her isolated from the outside world, forced her to live in the basement and sexually assaulted her.
Al-Turki, Tomsic said, made the woman invisible to nearly everyone and used threats of arrest by immigration authorities to keep her quiet. She told prosecutors Al-Turki held her passport and wouldn’t allow her out of the house.
“She wasn’t able to go to a movie, call a girlfriend … or go on a date,” Tomsic said. “From 18 to 24, these years were just taken away from her.”
Defense attorney John Richilano countered by saying the prosecution’s case is built on “cynical Islamaphobia.” He said the woman chose to live in the basement, often slept with the family’s children and was happy.
It was only after authorities raided the home in November 2004 that the woman began helping investigators build a case against Al-Turki, he said.
She didn’t report the sexual abuse until after 11 interviews with authorities over a span of six months, he said. And no physical evidence exists of a sexual assault, he said.
“I’m deeply concerned that because Mr. Al- Turki is from a place that we don’t know and don’t want to know … that there must be something going on, something bad,” he said.
Both Al-Turki and his wife, Sarah Khonaizan, were charged with state and federal crimes. Khonaizan has reached plea agreements in exchange for avoiding jail sentences and has agreed to be deported.
Al-Turki still faces federal charges of harboring the nanny, whose visa had expired, and under-paying her.
Staff writer Jeremy P. Meyer can be reached at 303-820-1175 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com.
