You may think stories like this, of Saudi slavery in a Denver suburb, are appalling: US Jury Convicts Saudi Man of Imprisoning Indonesian Housekeeper.

A jury in the western U.S. state of Colorado has convicted a Saudi national of keeping his family’s Indonesian housekeeper captive for more than four years.

The jury found Homaidan al-Turki guilty Friday on 12 charges of false imprisonment, extortion and sexual abuse involving the woman, who al-Turki brought to the United States in 2000 to cook and take care of his wife and children at their home in a Denver suburb.

Al-Turki’s wife pleaded guilty earlier to lesser charges.

The Indonesian woman, now 24-years-old, told authorities about her ordeal shortly after she was detained in November 2004 for overstaying her visa.

Al-Turki’s attorney argued that cultural differences are behind the charges, and said the verdict would be appealed.

But if you do think there’s something slightly, uh, medieval about such behavior, it’s because you’re culturally insensitive to the real problem. Possibly even Islamophobic. Let our friends the Saudis enlighten you: Govt Doing Little to Protect Us From Abusive Maids, Employers Say.

JEDDAH, 8 July 2006 — Cases of Asian maids running away and leaving their employers in desperate situations seem to be a growing phenomenon. We tend to hear many cases of maids being abused by their employers but at the same time there are multiple cases of families themselves being abused and treated inappropriately by their maids.

Recently, having only been in the Kingdom for two days an Asian maid ran away from her sponsor’s home. In another case one maid demanded her employers send her back to her home country saying working, as a maid, was not befitting her and in a third case a maid left her sponsor’s house at a critical time when the lady of the house had given birth just a few days earlier.

According to Al-Watan newspaper, many Saudis complain that the Ministry of Labor is doing very little to protect their rights as more and more maids run away. Employers say that they end up losing considerable amounts of money when the housemaids flee and are never compensated. It seems that as soon as the workload increases and maids are asked to rub some extra elbow grease into their work then the women bail out and abort ship.