MADINA: A woman accused of physically abusing the Indonesian maid in her employment has been transferred to Madina General Prison due to a lack of cells for women at the Bureau of Investigation and Prosecution and police detention centers. The woman, a professor at Taiba University, will stand before the Shariah Court in Madina when investigations are complete. The maid, who is under the sponsorship of the woman's husband, made the accusations after police were called late January to Al-Ansar Hospital in Madina, where doctors attending to a woman who had survived a jump from the top of a building noticed injuries thought to be unrelated to the fall. A medical source at the hospital said that the woman had burn marks on her back and other parts of her body, as well as open wounds on her face and head. “An X-ray revealed broken ribs,” the source said. The wife of the maid's sponsor denied all accusations when questioned by police, however, and her father told Okaz/Saudi Gazette that the maid suffered from “mental disturbances”. He said she had been examined on previous occasions by four doctors at different hospitals. “We have their reports stating her mental condition,” he said. “She had tried to jump several times from the same building.” The National Society of Human Rights also spoke to the Indonesian woman at King Fahd Hospital, to which she was later transferred from Al-Ansar. Increased awareness Commenting on the case, Fatima Abdul Hameed of Madina Health Affairs' Domestic Violence Department said that the issue of abuse of housemaids in the Kingdom was coming increasingly to the fore and that public awareness was growing. “Criticism focuses on maids' working conditions, overwork, lack of sleep, the failure to pay them properly and provide medical care, as well as verbal and physical abuse,” she said. “ The two cases that have emerged in Madina in just a matter of months call for a proper psychological and social study from the authorities.” Abdul Hameed was referring to the case of 23-year-old Sumiati Binti Salan Mustapa, who was admitted to hospital in November suffering from broken bones and burns. “The study should attempt to ascertain the motives and causes of violence, and should cover both the perpetrator and the victim,” Abdul Hameed said. “We need to know if there are psychological reasons or social pressures that could explain the abuse of housemaids.” She warns against apportioning blame, saying that “there are several parties at fault”, and says the true extent of the problem might be hidden by incidents going unreported and women preferring instead to flee the home of their employers. “The fear on the part of employers, that housemaids might run away or report them to the authorities, leads to some families locking them up. Some finally approach hospitals or the police, but only when the conditions they are living in have grown worse.” According to Abdul Hameed, many housemaids are under pressure due to socioeconomic conditions, homesickness, and missing relatives and friends, a situation that can be exacerbated by moral, religious and cultural differences between the maid and her employer. Resulting abuse – “beating, stabbing, burning, locking them up, depriving them of food, overworking them and not paying them” – can push housemaids, Abdul Hameed said, to “flee the employer's home, commit suicide or vent their anger on the children they are entrusted with caring”, as well as “turning to sorcery, prostitution and theft”.
