Does Washington apathy about the Saudi sex slave trade on American soil sound familiar? It should. In 2013, I reported on two Filipina women who escaped a Saudi diplomatic compound in Virginia after suffering abuse. They were taken into protective custody by Department of Homeland Security personnel. The gated complex is owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Armed Forces Office, whose personnel reportedly enjoy full diplomatic immunity.
DHS refused to respond to my follow-up inquiries about the case. The status of the alleged assailant remains unknown. This spring, Walden Bello, chairman of the Overseas Workers Affairs Committee in the Philippine House of Representatives, revealed that one of the abused workers “was sent back to Jeddah to take care of the mother” of the alleged attacker.
Let’s hope the worker hasn’t run into Meshael Alayban, wife of Abdulrahman bin Nasser bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who is allegedly back in her home country after wiggling out of felony human trafficking charges in Orange County, Calif., two years ago. A Kenyan maid escaped from Alayban’s compound and told police that Alayban confiscated her passport, refused to abide by an employment contract, and forbade the worker from returning to her home country — where she had an ailing seven-year-old daughter.
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