A Texas couple has been ordered to pay $121,000 to a Nigerian woman who they kept in domestic servitude for two years. Chudy Nsobundu, 57, and his wife Sandra, 49, were also sentenced to seven months in jail, seven months of home confinement, and three years’ probation for their crimes.
The Huffington Post reports that the victim was recruited from Nigeria and promised a $100 monthly salary by the couple:
Instead, from September 2013 and October 2015, she said she was forced to work 19.5 hour days for the couple and their five children without pay or breaks. She was additionally subjected to physical and verbal abuse, strictly leftover food as her meals, and was denied a bed and warm showers.
To prevent her from leaving, she said her passport was taken and she was physically threatened.
A tip to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center finally led to the woman being rescued in October 2015. It was then that authorities discovered false information on her U.S. work visa paperwork.
In 2016, Sandra Nsobundu pleaded guilty to “unlawful conduct with respect to documents in furtherance of forced labor.” Her husband, Chudy Nsobundu, pleaded guilty to visa fraud.
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