A real-life Cinderella story unfolded in a villa in an exclusive Hamburg suburb, where a millionaire couple kept an Ecuadorian teenager as a slave for 18 months before she escaped.
The girl, identified as Rosa-Maria J., came to Germany from her poverty-stricken home village aged just 18 on the promise of a steady job for the millionaires in their fancy villa, kitted out with a sauna and swimming pool.
State prosecutors have begun an investigation on suspicion of "exploitative human trafficking," though a judge has suggested a settlement of €20,000.
Now 21, Rosa-Maria J. told the
Hamburger Morgenpostnewspaper, “The family promised me $800 a month for my work as household help and children's nanny.”
But the couple – a 43-year-old German man and a 41-year-old Ecuadorean woman - took the girl's passport on arrival, banned her from making any contact with the outside world and refused to pay her.
"I had to work every day of the week, sometimes 14 hours a day," she said.
"I got long lists of household tasks that I had to work through," she said, before adding that the wife constantly kept tabs on her.
"I felt like a slave."
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