She was promised school. She ended up enslaved and tortured as a housemaid

Sri Siti Marni was 11 years old when her aunt introduced her to a wealthy acquaintance from Jakarta who promised to take her in and pay for her schooling.

What followed was nine years of abuse that left Marni traumatized and physically disfigured in a case that drew national attention to the way millions like her are coerced and exploited as domestic workers, one of the most common sources of employment for impoverished Indonesian girls and young women. Some girls die. Others are maimed, and many languish for so long they grow into women and are forgotten.

She sprang for the opening and climbed down the side of the house clinging to an antenna cable. Marni then scaled a gate and ran until she found a police station. She appeared before the officers as a ghost-like figure drowning in an oversized T-shirt. Her cheeks were badly swollen. Her lip was split. She was so malnourished by then that she looked about 12 despite being eight years older.

“The younger they are, the easier they are to manipulate,” said Siti Zuma of the Legal Aid Foundation of the Indonesian Women’s Assn. for Justice. “They cannot fight back, especially when they are alone and so far away from home. Parents see the employers as heroes who have higher social status and can give their children a better life.”

“Most of the domestic workers are women, so from the point of view of a patriarchal culture like ours, they are just doing ‘women’s work,’” said Theresia Iswarini, a member of the National Commission on the Elimination of Violence Against Women. “Their skills are discredited and their work isn’t recognized as real work.”

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