Three people of a Pakistan-origin family in Virginia, US, have been sentenced to prison for forcing a Pakistani bride to labor as well as physically and mentally abusing her for 12 years.
Zahida Aman, 80, has been sentenced to imprisonment of 144 months, Mohammed Rehan Chaudhry, 48, to 120 months, and Mohammad Nauman Chaudhry, 55, to 60 months in prison in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Zahida and Rehan have also been directed to pay the victim $250,000 in compensation for lost wages and other financial losses.
According to the US Justice Department, the three offenders were convicted after a 7-day trial in May last year. The jury convicted them of conspiracy to commit forced labor and found Zahida guilty of document servitude, an act of keeping another person’s ID documentation.
Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Kristen Clarke, stated that the convicts blatantly exploited the victim’s weaknesses and viciously compelled her to labor through physical and emotional abuse.
The victim was married to Zahida’s son in 2002, but even after her husband relocated, the culprits kept her at their house in Virginia to serve the extended family.
The US Justice Department declared that evidence proved that the victim was forced to serve the family as a domestic servant using physical and verbal abuse, she wasn’t allowed to talk to her family in Pakistan, her immigration documents and money were seized, and eventually, the convicted family threatened her to separate her from her children by deporting her to Pakistan.
