Denise Cros-Toure, left, and Mohamed Toure, right, have been sentenced to seven years each in prison. She was abused and neglected for 16 years β until she escaped, according to a criminal complaint against the couple. Mohamed Toure, 58, and Denise Cros-Toure, 58, were convicted in January of forced labor, conspiracy to harbor an alien and alien harboring. They both are citizens of Guinea β where the young girl was taken from β and lawful permanent residents of the US, but may lose their US immigration status and be deported to Guinea, the Justice Department said.
The couple had faced a maximum sentence of 20 years for forced labor, 10 years for conspiracy to commit alien harboring, and 5 years for alien harboring.
Investigators claim the young girl initially lived in a one-room, mud hut with her family in Guinea. She was still young when her father, who worked as a farmer, urged her to go into the city to work. She did not speak English when she arrived and was not enrolled in school. Her day began around 7 a. The couple kept her at home, isolated her, forced her to do housework and care for their children with no pay and made sure she was entirely dependent on them, according to the criminal complaint.
They choked her, whipped her, sometimes pulled on her hair β and other times shaved it, the Justice Department said. Watt told CNN, the girl made the claims after her family asked that she be returned to Guinea. She was charting runs on her Fitbit, doing modeling shoots.
By the summer of , the girl had confided to people who knew Cros-Toure and Toure about the abuse and had tried to run away, but she was always returned home, according to the criminal complaint. In August of that year, with the help of a few former neighbors, she waited until Cros-Toure was gone from the house, and fled, taking with her a duffel bag, a backpack and her travel documents.
