01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, July 19, 2011
By Katie Mulvaney
Journal Staff Writer
[img width= height=]http://www.projo.com/photos/20110719/ri0719_uae_07-19-11_R4P8S3F.jpg[/img]
UAE Col. Arif Mohamed Saeed Mohamed Al-Ali arrives at federal court.
The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires
PROVIDENCE — A Filipino maid testified Monday she knew she was in trouble the moment she arrived at the East Greenwich house
she would live in with her boss, a United Arab Emirates colonel, and his family in July 2010.
“Right then, I already thought I will have a hard time working for them because I know how their children behave,†Elizabeth Cabitla Ballesteros
said through an interpreter in U.S. District Court. She immediately wanted to return to the tiny village where she lived in the Philippines, she said.
Ballesteros was the first witness in the trial of Arif Mohamed Saeed Mohamed Al-Ali, whom she had worked for as a maid and babysitter since 2007.
Authorities accuse Al-Ali of persuading Ballesteros, 39, to come to the United States and then forcing her into unpaid labor while he
attended a year-long program at the Naval War College. He is also charged with providing ICE agents with false documents indicating he paid her $19,000.
Al-Ali, who is being represented by former U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente, opted for a trial before Chief U.S. District Court Judge Mary M. Lisi
instead of a jury. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Ballesteros told the court in often tearful testimony as she gazed at the ceiling that Al-Ali did not pay her despite a contract
used to secure her visa into America that said she would be paid $1,600 for a 40-hour workweek.
Instead, she worked without pay 17 hours a day, seven days a week, caring for the youngest of the couple’s five children;
cooking and feeding the family; cleaning their three-level 15 Downing St. home; and washing two cars daily, she said.
“Nothing,†she said when asked whether she or her family received money.
She described accompanying the Al-Ali family to a waterside picnic Aug. 6.
A woman approached her as she waited in the shade for the children to get out of the bathroom.
The woman, whom she later learned to be “Cecelia,†asked if she was Filipino, she said.
Ballesteros responded that she wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone, but she said she handed the woman a slip of paper with
her cell phone number on it. “ ‘Ma’am, please help me,’ †she testified she said.
Why did you ask for help? inquired Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Rogers. “Because I really wanted to be rescued. …
I just wanted to go back to the Philippines. … What I felt at the time was, God help me.â€
Over the following months, she corresponded with Cecelia via text messages, Ballesteros said.
“I’m working too hard. I almost couldn’t bear it. I had a pain in my body,†she said.
On Oct. 7, after Al-Ali left for the War College and the children went to school, Ballesteros packed a suitcase and a plastic bag
with belongings and escaped while his wife was in her bedroom, she said.
She left a note on the living-room table thanking the Al-Alis and telling them she loved the kids, but that she couldn’t take it anymore, she said.
A woman named Elizabeth Stern drove her away.
Under questioning by Corrente, Ballesteros acknowledged she had continued to work for the Al-Alis for years although
she was paid less than half of what she had agreed to.
She did so, she said, because she wanted to pay for her three children to go to school in the Philippines.
She even planned to return to the UAE with the Al-Alis when the Naval War College program concluded
because she “already loved the children,†she said.
Corrente noted that the woman who interviewed her for her visa in the UAE described her as seeming “comfortable†with her employer.
Ballesteros admitted she hadn’t read her employment contract, although she knows how to read English.
She told of Al-Ali grabbing her arm and forcing her to sign another contract 12 times the night before she left with the family
for the United States on July 21. He told her, she said, “it was for his own safety.â€
She described him swearing at her after she asked for a Sim card for her cell phone and threatening to send her back to the Philippines.
He told her, she said, he had the power of the Navy behind him. Al-Ali, who took notes throughout Monday’s proceedings,
would not return her passport despite her request, she said.
“By Aug. 6, you were asking a stranger for help to escape, weren’t you?†Corrente said.
Not to escape, she said, but to contact the embassy because they were the only people who could help her get her full salary and return to the Philippines.
Corrente questioned her testimony that she cooked three meals a day over the 10 weeks she was with the family in the United States.
Thirty of those days were during the Ramadan holiday, Corrente said.
During Ramadan, she said, she cooked breakfast for the children and a big lunch for the whole family.
But Muslims can’t eat until after sundown during Ramadan, Corrente said. “I know,†Ballesteros, who has filed a civil suit against Al-Ali and his wife, said.
Al-Ali, who remains free on $100,000 cash bail, is expected to testify in his own defense.
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