SAN FRANCISCO -- An employee of the Italian Consulate in San Francisco and his wife are accused in a federal criminal case of luring a Brazilian woman to this country with promises of a better life, then turning her into an indentured servant and subjecting her to physical and psychological abuse, court records show.

Giuseppe Penzato, 54, and his wife of eight years, Kesia Penzato, 33, were arrested Friday and charged in U.S. District Court in San Francisco with forced labor. Both were released Monday on bond.

Kesia Penzato knew the woman from when they were both teenagers in Brazil. But after the couple brought the woman here, Penzato derided her as ugly, unwanted even by her own mother and suited only for servant's work, a federal investigator said.

The woman, identified in court papers only as Jane Doe, finally fled after Kesia Penzato choked her, authorities said.

The couple withheld food from the woman and falsely told her that U.S. law did not apply to them because they were diplomats, investigators said.

The Penzatos are also defendants in a civil suit filed by the woman, accusing them of human trafficking.

Attorneys for the couple wrote in court papers that the dispute "is nothing more than a civil wage and hour case brought by a scheming young woman to facilitate her goal of living permanently in the United States."

The woman arrived in the United States on a domestic servant visa in August 2009 after the Penzatos promised her $1,500 a month and free room and board to clean their home on Chestnut Street in San Francisco and care for their children, Special Agent Melissa Saurwein of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wrote in an affidavit.

Giuseppe Penzato, an assistant at the Italian Consulate, confiscated the woman's passport after they passed through U.S. Customs in Houston and told her the United States "was a dangerous place, where someone might rob her and take it," Saurwein wrote. He said he would keep it safe for her, authorities said.

Later, after the woman had become a virtual prisoner at the Penzatos' home, she asked Giuseppe Penzato for her passport back, Saurwein said. Penzato threw it at her and "taunted her to figure out her rights," the affidavit said.

By then the woman was working at least 60 hours a week instead of the 35 hours promised in her contract with the Penzatos, authorities said. She wasn't paid until fall 2009, when Giuseppe Penzato gave her $700 and said $500 was her salary and $200 was a loan that she would have to repay, the affidavit said.

The Penzatos later gave her a $600 check but also forced her to give back an undisclosed amount that she supposedly owed, authorities said.

Kesia Penzato berated the woman, "telling her that she was born to be servant, that she was a prostitute, that she was ugly and that even her birth mother did not want her," Saurwein wrote.

The woman left the couple's home in November 2009, after an incident in which Kesia Penzato slapped her, pulled her hair, squeezed her throat and shook her, the affidavit said. She is still living in San Francisco, authorities said.

An Italian Consulate official declined to comment.

The couple's countersuit against the woman claims that she invaded their privacy and damaged "their good reputation and dignity within the community and the Italian Consulate" by secretly recording their private conversations.

Those conversations included discussions about Giuseppe Penzato's "employment with the general consulate of Italy and other personal matters," the countersuit says.