Indonesian Woman Enslaved By Sugar Land Family For Years, Court Records Show (Fort Bend Now)

Indonesian Woman Enslaved By Sugar Land Family For Years, Court Records Show
4/04/08
by Bob Dunn

An Indonesian woman who was enslaved, beaten and forced to work for five years at several Fort Bend County homes will receive a total of $72,676 in restitution as the result of a plea agreement reached Thursday in federal court.
Rozina Mohd Ali, of Arrowhead Drive in Sugar Land, pleaded guilty Thursday in U.S. District Court in Houston to one count of an immigration law violation.
As a result, Ali agreed to make restitution, and U.S. Justice Department attorneys agreed she would spend one year and one day in prison.
According to a criminal complaint against Ali, she concealed or destroyed the passport of the Indonesian woman, known in court documents only as “S,” in order to participate in “trafficking, peonage, slavery, involuntary servitude or forced labor…”
Court documents show S met Ali through an Indonesian employment agency in August 2002, and agreed to work for Ali in Indonesia for the equivalent of about $100 a month.
But after about two weeks, according to the criminal complaint, Ali “moved S to the United States without S’s knowledge. S learned that she had entered the United States when she arrived.”
Ali presented immigration officials with S’s travel documentation, and from that point on, S never had them in her own possession, according to court documents.
S was brought to the home of Fatimah Mohd Ali, Rozina Ali’s sister, in the 3900 block of Breaux Bridge in Sugar Land, where she worked as a domestic servant for about two years while Rozina Ali returned to Malaysia, court documents show.
Fatimah Mohd Ali told S on two occasions that money (a total of about $420) had been wired to S’s family in Indonesia by Rozina Ali’s family in Malaysia, court records show.
If those payments in fact were made, it was the only money that changed hands during S’s five years in forced servitude, according to court records.
Rozina Ali returned from Malaysia and took up residence at the Breaux Bridge Lane home in 2004, and S began working for Rozina Ali, according to court documents.
“S worked as Rozina Mohd Ali’s housekeeper, including providing the cooking, cleaning, laundry, ironing and yard work,” the criminal complaint against Rozina Ali states. “At the end of the day, she provided massages and waxing to Rozina Mohd Ali. S worked approximately 18-19 hours per day and was not provided any days off.”
S also was forced to clean and cook for Rozina Ali’s family members at other Sugar Land homes on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, court records show. This included a home in the 2700 block of Arrowhead Drive, where Rozina Ali moved in 2007, a home in the 4300 block of Oak Trail Court identified as Rozina Ali’s older brother’s home, and a home in the 100 block of Carlie Way in Stafford as another of Rozina Ali’s sister’s. S was never paid for the work.
Court documents show that law enforcement officers were made aware of the case at least as early as May 2007, about a month before Rozina Ali moved to Arrowhead Drive.
Court documents show an official from the Indonesian Consul went to the Breaux Bridge Lane residence with a Sugar Land police officer on May 25, 2007, knocked on the door and “called out for” S, but no one answered despite the fact the men “had seen movement inside the house.”
On June 21, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents put the Breaux Bridge Lane home under surveillance, but by then the house appeared to have been abandoned, according to court records. But a database search provided agents with the addresses of the Arrowhead Drive, Oak Trail Court and Carlie Way homes.
Nearly two months later, an FBI agent and a Harris County Sheriff’s deputy conducted surveillance at the Arrowhead Drive home and saw what turned out to be S sweeping the sidewalk in front of the house.
The next day, the two saw Rozina Ali drive S to the Oak Trial Court home. After the occupants of the house, except for S, left for the evening, the agent and the deputy rang the doorbell and knocked, but no one answered the door.
Four days later, S escaped from the Arrowhead Drive home. On Aug. 20, 2007, two “concerned citizens” found S sleeping on a bench across from their Sugar Land home, and brought her to the Indonesian Consul, according to court records.
S told law enforcement officials Rozina Ali began beating her on a regular basis by 2005, and “would forcefully grab her and beat her about the head and torso with her fists.”
S told agents that on the day of her escape, Rozina Ali “beat her with her hands upon S’s head, kicked her in her abdomen and hit her back and shoulders with a clothes hanger. S stated that she had been crying for most of the day and could not take the abuse any longer. When Rozina Mohd Ali left the residence for church on the evening of Aug. 19, 2007, S escaped the residence by climbing out of a window. S stated that she could not leave through the front door because it was locked and she did not have a key.”
After she was discovered on the park bench, S was taken to St. Lukes Minor Emergency center, where a physician photographed “numerous bruises on S’s body, including a long, narrow mark on her back…consistent with a mark made by a clothes hanger,” the criminal complaint says.
Beyond the $72,676 in restitution, no fine was levied against Rozina Ali in the case. Also, the U.S. Attorney’s Office agreed not to pursue charges against Rozina Ali’s father, sisters, brothers, their spouses or her ex-husband for any part they may have played in S’s enslavement.