A Saudi woman who pleaded guilty to harboring an illegal immigrant in a case authorities said involved the virtual slavery of an Indonesian maid was sentenced today to five years’ probation and given home detention until she leaves the country.
Sarah Khonaizan, 35, had faced up to a year in federal prison and a $20,000 fine. In exchange for her guilty plea in May, prosecutors dropped charges of forced labor and document servitude.
She also has pleaded guilty in state court to theft for failing to pay thousands of dollars in wages to the 24-year-old Indonesian woman who served as a nanny for her family for more than four years in Colorado and in Saudi Arabia.
Khonaizan’s attorney, Forrest Lewis, said his client would not fight any deportation order and plans to voluntarily return to Saudi Arabia after completing her state and federal sentences.
Prosecutors and FBI agents accused Khonaizan and her husband, Homaidan Al-Turki, both Saudi citizens, of hiding the woman’s passport and forcing her to cook, clean and care for their five children in their suburban Aurora home. She slept on a mattress on the basement floor and was paid less than $2 a day, an FBI affidavit said.
State prosecutors also alleged that Al-Turki sexually abused the woman repeatedly. The Associated Press is not identifying her because of the assault allegations.
Last month, a state jury on June 30 found Al-Turki guilty of 12 counts of unlawful sexual contact by use of force, threats or intimidation; false imprisonment; conspiracy to commit false imprisonment; criminal extortion and theft.
He faces eight years to life in prison for each of the sexual contact counts when he is sentenced Aug. 31.
Al-Turki also faces an October federal trial on charges of forced labor, document servitude and harboring an illegal immigrant. In April, Al-Turki and Khonaizan agreed to pay the nanny about $64,000 in wages to settle a Labor Department lawsuit.
Al-Turki, a linguist, worked at a Denver publishing and translating company and was a doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado.
