IIt was in Capital Security in Najma, the police station in a neighborhood in Doha, where I first met Wazilfa, the woman in courtroom number 12. She emerged carrying her baby in her arms, wrapped in a blue blanket and the folds of her sari. Her story came tumbling out in a rush of broken Arabic that my translator pieced together as best she could despite the muffled acoustics from the glass barrier that separated us.

Wazilfa came to work in Qatar as a domestic helper. She had been there for a few months when she met a Bangladeshi man online. They carried on a relationship for almost one year. Fridays, the official day off in Qatar, they would meet in the majelles — a structure separate from the main home where men usually gather to pray or smoke shisha.

“He told me he loved me,” she says. But he disappeared when she told him she was pregnant. When she began to show, her employer turned her over to the authorities. She gave the police her boyfriend’s photo and mobile number, but they could not find him. It seems he had given Wazilfa a fake name.

Qatar is a religiously conservative country with limited opportunities for men and women to mix socially. This compounds the homesickness, boredom, and isolation for domestic workers and makes meeting online appealing.

In some cases, “boyfriend” is a euphemism for “benefactor” and the relationship functions as an income extender. “Always, we have to look at the context of where these women are coming from and why they do it. Often they live and work in hostile environments where they are treated like slaves,” says Ellene Sana, Executive Director of the Center for Migrant Advocacy in the Philippines.

Wazilfa wrote down a number on a piece of paper and held it up to the glass, begging us to call him. “Tell him that I will marry him. Just please get me and my baby out of jail,” she pleads.