Three family members in Virginia were sentenced to federal prison on forced labor charges after they coerced a Pakistani woman to be a servant inside their home for more than 12 years. The defendants are the mother and brothers of the victim’s husband, who was not involved in the years-long abuse against the woman.
The prosecutor handling the case once described it as “the modern-day equivalent of slavery” for over a decade.
Zahida Aman, 80, and her two sons, Mohammed Naumman Chaudhri, 54, and Mohammed Rehan Chaudhri, 48, were convicted in May of conspiracy to commit forced labor.
The court has also ordered the family to pay the victim $250,000 in restitution for back wages and other financial losses she incurred during her 12 years in forced labor.
The trio was indicted in federal court on charges of conspiracy, forced labor, and document servitude in 2019. According to court documents, the family members “conspired to force” the woman, identified as MB in the court documents, to clean their home in Midlothian, Virginia, and provide additional services from March 2002 until August 2014, ABC 8 News reported.
The victim, identified only as MB was a citizen living in Pakistan who had an arranged marriage to her husband, identified as SC in the court documents, on or around January 2002. He then applied for and obtained a visa for his wife to live “lawfully” in the US with him. At the time, Aman gave the woman some advice on how to keep her husband happy.
“If you want to be happy in your married life, the way to your husband’s heart is through me … and if you want him happy, you have to make me happy,” Aman said per court documents, according to the newspaper.
The three family members lived with the woman and her husband at 2700 London Park Drive in Medlothian. Aman reportedly “asserted her role as the leader and organizer of the family,” according to a sentencing memo, per the Miami Herald. She became the head of the household after SC moved to Pennsylvania in 2006 and then moved to California in 2008, moving both times to practice medicine.
MB had temporary immigration status in the US and reportedly lived in fear inside the home as Aman took away her immigration papers, jewelry, and personal items, the news release stated. Additionally, the defendants threatened the woman with deportation if she did not obey their demands and threatened to separate her from her children.
The family members forced the woman to perform services and “verbally assaulted and physically abused the victim. The defendants slapped, kicked, and pushed the victim, even beat her with a wooden board, and, on one occasion, hog-tied her hands and feet and dragged her down the stairs in front of her children,” the sentencing memo stated.
“The defendants exploited someone who should have been a loved family member to force her to work in their home for over 14 years,” said Jessica D. Aber, US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, at a court hearing when the defendants were convicted in May 2022.
“Forced labor, the modern-day equivalent of slavery, has no place in our country or district, and we will stop at nothing to prosecute those that commit these or similar crimes,” Aber continued. “Let this conviction serve as a light to survivors impacted by labor trafficking and as a deterrent to those conspiring to commit heinous labor trafficking crimes.”
Sources: AWM, ABC 8 News, Miami Herald
dan