A wealthy Southlake couple were indicted on a number of federal charges Wednesday, nearly five months after they were arrested in suspicion of having kept a child from Africa as a slave for 16 years.

Denise Cros-Toure and Mohamed Toure (Tarrant County Sheriff's Department)

Mohamed Toure and Denise Florence Cros-Toure, both 57, are charged with forced labor, harboring an alien for financial gain, conspiracy to commit forced labor and conspiracy to harbor an alien for financial gain.

Toure faces an additional charge of making false statements to federal agents by saying that he attempted to adopt the girl, according to the indictment.

Toure and Cros-Toure were arrested April 25 and placed on home detention after their release from custody several days later.

A lawyer for the couple, Scott H. Palmer, has previously said that the criminal complaint against his clients "is riddled with salacious allegations, fabrications and lies."

Authorities began investigating in 2016 after the victim fled the couple's home on Briarridge Drive with two bags of her belongings.

According to the criminal complaint, the girl had been living in a mud hut in a village in Guinea when she went to work for Cros-Toure's parents in a city. In January 2000, someone took her to an airport and she was placed on a flight — alone — to the United States.

The girl's passport and visa said she was 5 years old (though other documents indicate she could have been as old as 13), and she did not speak English. Her most vivid memory of the journey was "a kind flight attendant who gave her cookies and a toy," according to court documents.

She told authorities that she was soon put to work. After the five Toure children went to school she began "cleaning, making the beds, vacuuming, cooking and gardening," and kept working until the children were in bed, according to the complaint.

Neighbors occasionally saw her walking the children to school, as well as painting the home and mowing the lawn, and thought the couple had a nanny, the complaint says. She didn't play with other children, neighbors said.

There was no record of the girl attending school in Carroll ISD, which includes the couple's home. She told investigators she wasn't allowed to take part in the same activities as the Toure children — learning to ride a bike, use a computer, swim, drive — or even care for her hair.

For years, the girl said, she slept on the floor in one of the children's bedrooms, and had only hand-me-downs to wear. A Southlake police officer who came across her in a park in 2002 wrote in a report that her appearance was unkempt.

The family never celebrated her birthday, she said, and she didn't know how old she was.

The victim also reported that Toure and Cros-Toure abused her physically and emotionally.

She was slapped, hit with a belt and lashed with an electrical cord, and Cros-Toure once yanked an earring from her left ear, the complaint says. An investigator noted scars on the girl's arms and ear.

The girl said the couple yelled at her often, calling her "a little nothing," a slave and — in a recorded conversation — a whore. As punishment, Cros-Toure occasionally kicked her out of the home and she spent the night in nearby Bicentennial Park, she said.

In August 2016, a few former neighbors helped the victim leave the home with some of her belongings, her long-expired travel documents and some photographs. She went to a YMCA, where employees contacted authorities.

Police said the couple didn't report her missing.

Palmer, the couple's lawyer, said the victim had been treated like a family member, which included having chores and other responsibilities. They gave her clothes, food, a bed, spending money and Christmas gifts, he said, and she had social media accounts and was in contact with her relatives in Guinea.

Palmer disputed that the girl was 5 when she came to the U.S., and he said witness accounts and photographs would "reveal the truth that she was never enslaved, forced to do anything against her will, never beaten, never threatened." He offered as evidence pictures from an Instagram account purported to be hers.

"We look forward to amassing a mountain of evidence to refute the Government's portrayal of our clients," Palmer said in a prepared statement, "and look forward to revealing the motivation of this woman to lie, betray, and attempt to destroy the family that took her in at the request of her father for a better life in the United States."

Toure and Cros-Toure, both Guinean natives, were granted asylum in the United States in 2000, court documents indicate.

Toure is the son of former Guinean President Ahmed Sekou Toure, and Cros-Toure's father was the nation's secretary of state.

Investigators did not find much work history for the couple, who appeared to receive income from "significant" overseas deposits, according to the complaint. Their home, on a leafy street in well-to-do Southlake, was appraised by Tarrant County at nearly $600,000 this year.

In the mid-1990s, the couple sometimes appeared in print and photographs in The Dallas Morning News' philanthropy coverage for their support of causes that included Fair Park's African American Museum.

1 / 2Denise Cros-Toure (second from left) appeared with longtime Dallas philanthropist Margaret McDermott at a 1993 event honoring supporters of the African American Museum in Fair Park.(File Photo / Staff) 2 / 2Mohamed Toure, right, at the grand opening of his wife's store, Out of Africa, in December 1994.(File Photo / Staff)

Cros-Toure once operated Out of Africa, an exotic-furnishings store in Dallas' Preston Center. A 1994 News article covering the store's opening mentioned that she and business partner Jan Showers had noteworthy connections.

"Invoking [the names of Cros-Toure's father and father-in-law] opened doors and cut through bureaucratic red tape, allowing the two Texas women access to artworks and domestic goods not easily found in Dallas," the article said.

Toure and Cros-Toure each face a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, along with a $250,000 fine and restitution, if convicted of the forced-labor charges, and up to 10 years and a $250,000 fine if convicted of alien harboring.