The couple charged, Firas Majeed and his wife, Shatha Abbas, have pleaded not guilty. The story told to police by W.M. is heartbreaking:

She said she sought a job through an employment agency in Indonesia and began to work for an Iraqi man, Dr. Haider Kubba, and his large extended family in Dubai in 2010. She lived with them, working 20 hours a day, seven days a week, for five years, the complaint says.

She cleaned, did laundry, cooked and took care of the children — but was not allowed to leave the house on her own, with the doors and windows being locked while Kubba went to work, she said, according to the complaint. The exception was being allowed to take the trash out, with permission.

The housekeeper said she was never paid for her work, although her employers sporadically sent unknown amounts money to her mother in Indonesia, and some years had passed without payments.

Kubba kept all of her travel documents, including her passport, she told authorities.

When her two-year contract with the family was up, she told the family she wanted to return to Indonesia. She got little response, and was finally told she’d have to pay her own way back. About a year later, she discovered the front door had not been locked while her boss was at work, and she hailed a taxi to the Indonesian Consulate.

But Kubba was called, and he took her back to his house after promising the consular officials that he would pay her and allow her to return to Indonesia after three months, the complaint says.

But that promise was broken. After two more years, she was told she had to go to the United States to care for the ailing father of Kubba’s wife. W.M. said she was again promised that if she complied for two months, she’d be allowed to return to Indonesia, the complaint says.

She flew to the U.S. in November and lived with Kubba’s wife’s extended family in El Cajon, including the wife’s sister, Abbas, and her husband, Majeed. She said she again took up the same housekeeping duties, working 16- to 18-hour days under the constant watch of the family. And again, she said, she was not paid.

She said she was verbally abused in both households, and that Abbas had once pushed her.