When Kenyan maids asked for help abroad, diplomats asked for sex

Selestine Kemoli fled to the Kenyan Embassy in Riyadh in 2020, terrified and desperate.

Ms. Kemoli worked in Saudi Arabia as a maid. Like many Africans in the East in her situation, she said, she was mistreated. She said to the embassy’s work that her boss had cut her breasts with an office knife, forced her to drink urine and raped her.

Broke and alone, she wanted help to go home with her two children in Kenya.

“You are beautiful,” replied the work striker Robinson Juma Twanga, according to Ms. Kemoli.

Mr. Twanga proposed to help, she said, but with a catch. “I’m going to sleep with you, in the same way that your boss has slept with you,” she recalls, telling him.

Several women, who did not know each other and lived in separate counties, told New York Times when they had fled abuses in Saudi Arabia, Mr. Twanga asked for sex or money, or put them on sex work to pay a ticket.

Lawyers say they have collected similar accounts for many women involving other Embassy officials. They said that Mr. Twanga was just an example of how these officials exploit women at their most vulnerable times.