Catholic Online REPORT: Doctors find 24 nails driven into body
A Sri Lankan maid returned to her native country needing dire medical help after her employers in Saudi Arabia brutally tortured her. Physicians discovered 24 nails that had been driven into the maid's body.
49-year-old maid L.G. Ariyawathi was hospitalized suffering from severe pain at a facility about 100 miles away from capital, Colombo, according to media reports.
49-year-old L.G. Ariyawathi was hospitalized suffering from severe pain at a facility about 100 miles away from capital, Colombo, according to media reports.
She told a local newspaper that her employers tortured her with the nails as punishment. "They (employer and his family) did not allow me even to rest. The woman at the house had heated the nails and then the man inserted them into my body," Ariyawathi told local newspaper reporters.
She said she traveled to Saudi Arabia in March and was paid only two month's salary, with her employer withholding three months' salary to buy an air ticket to send her home.
Doctors say the nails in her body range from one to two inches.
While the initial puncture wounds have healed over, the doctors told the Associated Press that Ariyawathi finds it difficult to walk because she has two nails in her knee and two in her ankles. Another needle is in her forehead, and the rest are in hands.
"Her condition is stable, but we are giving antibiotics and painkillers," her physician said, adding that doctors will begin removing the nails this week.
The 24 nails are "inside the body due to torture meted out by her Saudi employer," Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena, deputy minister of economic development, said in a statement on a government website.
Abeywardena said the government would "report about this matter to the Saudi Government and provide her adequate compensation."
Ariyawathi had allegedly been too afraid to complain about the abuse to Saudi authorities, fearing that her employers might not let her return home. She also did not report the abuse to Sri Lankan officials, until she was hospitalized.
About 1.5 million Sri Lankans work abroad, nearly 400,000 of them in Saudi Arabia alone.
http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=38002
A Sri Lankan maid returned to her native country needing dire medical help after her employers in Saudi Arabia brutally tortured her. Physicians discovered 24 nails that had been driven into the maid's body.
49-year-old L.G. Ariyawathi was hospitalized suffering from severe pain at a facility about 100 miles away from capital, Colombo, according to media reports.
She told a local newspaper that her employers tortured her with the nails as punishment. "They (employer and his family) did not allow me even to rest. The woman at the house had heated the nails and then the man inserted them into my body," Ariyawathi told local newspaper reporters.
She said she traveled to Saudi Arabia in March and was paid only two month's salary, with her employer withholding three months' salary to buy an air ticket to send her home.
Doctors say the nails in her body range from one to two inches.
While the initial puncture wounds have healed over, the doctors told the Associated Press that Ariyawathi finds it difficult to walk because she has two nails in her knee and two in her ankles. Another needle is in her forehead, and the rest are in hands.
"Her condition is stable, but we are giving antibiotics and painkillers," her physician said, adding that doctors will begin removing the nails this week.
The 24 nails are "inside the body due to torture meted out by her Saudi employer," Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena, deputy minister of economic development, said in a statement on a government website.
Abeywardena said the government would "report about this matter to the Saudi Government and provide her adequate compensation."
Ariyawathi had allegedly been too afraid to complain about the abuse to Saudi authorities, fearing that her employers might not let her return home. She also did not report the abuse to Sri Lankan officials, until she was hospitalized.
About 1.5 million Sri Lankans work abroad, nearly 400,000 of them in Saudi Arabia alone.
http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=38002
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