The New York Times reports on multiple accounts of Kenyan maids in Saudi Arabia who, after suffering abuse, were allegedly further exploited by Kenyan embassy officials. Robinson Juma Twanga, a labor attaché, is accused of demanding sex or money in exchange for assistance, or pressuring women into sex work to pay for repatriation tickets.
Selestine Kemoli, one of the victims, describes being abused by her employer and then facing demands for sexual favors from Mr. Twanga when she sought help at the embassy. Other women, interviewed separately, corroborate these allegations, detailing similar experiences.
Lawyers claim to have gathered similar accounts implicating other embassy officials, portraying Mr. Twanga's actions as representative of a pattern of exploitation of vulnerable women. The article highlights the vulnerability of these women and the systemic failure to protect them.
Selestine Kemoli fled to the Kenyan Embassy in Riyadh in 2020, terrified and desperate.
Ms. Kemoli had been working in Saudi Arabia as a maid. Like many East Africans in her situation, she said, she was being abused. She told the embassy’s labor attaché that her boss slashed her breasts with a paring knife, forced her to drink urine and raped her.
Broke and alone, she wanted help getting home to her two children in Kenya.
“You are beautiful,” the labor attaché, Robinson Juma Twanga, responded, according to Ms. Kemoli.
Mr. Twanga offered to help, she said, but with a catch. “I will sleep with you, just the same way your boss has slept with you,” she remembers him saying.
Multiple women, who did not know each other and lived in separate counties, told The New York Times that when they fled abuse in Saudi Arabia, Mr. Twanga demanded sex or money, or pressured them to go into sex work to pay for a ticket home.
Lawyers say they have collected similar accounts from numerous women involving other embassy officials. They said that Mr. Twanga is but one example of how these officials exploit women at their most vulnerable moments.
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