An American-born woman who escaped the “hell” of Saudi Arabia says the freedom of America is sweet, but that the bitter part of her decision to leave the oil-rich kingdom was having to abandon her two children.
Sarah Saga, 23, kidnapped as a child by her Saudi-born father and brought to the kingdom, then forced to remain there for years, told Fox News Channel’s “The Pulse” program she was glad to be reunited with her mother, Debbie Dornier, but upset at having to leave her son and daughter behind.
Saga was taken by her father in 1985 when she was just 6 years old. He kept her in Saudi Arabia after he had promised Dornier he would be gone only for a month-long vacation to visit his family.
But a month passed and Dornier, frantic, called her husband repeatedly and asked when he would be returning with Sarah. Finally, he told her he wasn’t coming back.
“She was born in Haywood, California, and she was here for six years,” Dornier told Fox interviewer Linda Vester. “Then she was taken against her will.”
Sarah, who said she was physically abused by her father, took refuge in the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah on June 15. She pleaded with U.S. officials to help her and her children, Ibrahim and Hanin, ages 3 and 5, to travel to America. But she was told that if she left, her Saudi-born children would, under Saudi law, have to stay in the kingdom.
Saudi law dictates that no woman, American or not, can leave the country without permission of her husband or father.
In those first few days after telling her he wasn’t coming back to America, says Dornier, her husband made sure she knew that if she ever tried to get her daughter out of Saudi Arabia, “he’d just kill her; he’d rather she not come back,” Dornier said.
Saga had no contact with her American family after 1989. No one even knew if she was alive, Vester said.
But three years ago, Saga was able to contact her grandmother in the U.S., and details of her ordeal were finally revealed.
Her mother and family discovered she was married and had the two children. On the program, Saga said she was forced into the marriage when she was 18, but didn’t necessarily object because she saw it as a way out of the “hell” she was living in under her father’s roof.
Since that first contact in 2000, Saga had remained in telephone contact with Dornier. And in May, she began planning to leave her “abusive” Saudi relatives, a decision that eventually led her to the U.S. Consulate.
“She said, ‘Mom, I want to come home, for good,'” Dornier said. “She said, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I feel like I’m a caged animal. This isn’t the way I should be living.'”
Saga was also concerned that her mother would be upset with her for leaving her children behind.
“She said, ‘Momma, don’t be mad at me. … I had to do this. This is the way it’s got to be,'” said Dornier. “The emotion was just overwhelming that I was going to see her … after 18 years.”
The homecoming was sweet. Upon being reunited with her mother and American family, Saga and Dornier shouted at each other with joy and embraced.
When the plane took off for America, “I felt like I could breathe,” Saga said. “I could feel the freedom. Only the kids were missing.”
She said that her father would beat her head against a wall and inflict other physical punishment upon her if she would make mistakes, “according to his beliefs.”
“He just grabbed my head and started banging it against a wall” when she was 13, she said.
Of her children, Saga says they asked her when she was coming back “when I handed them to their father” in the U.S. Embassy.
“I said, ‘No, I’m not going with you,'” she told Fox. “If I would have left that consulate, my father would have easily gotten a hold of me and killed me.”
Saga said she didn’t want her children to think she abandoned them. “I want them to understand that it was really hard for me [to leave them], and I really did this because of them,” she said. “I wanted them to come with me to have a good life. I didn’t want my daughter to have a hard life in Saudi Arabia.”
Although leaving behind her children meant a bittersweet homecoming, Saga says she has vowed to fight to get them back.
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