Ethiopian 'Snapchat maid' who fell seven storeys trying to escape abusive Kuwaiti employer returns home

Ethiopia's foreign ministry posted a video of Sadik returning to Ethiopia earlier this week, fully recovered after falling from a seventh floor window.

Society

2 min read

Robert Cusack

23 August, 2017

Adesech Sadik fell seven floors onto a corrugated roof below [YouTube]

The Ethiopian maid who fell from the seventh floor of a building after trying to escape her abusive Kuwaiti employer returned to her home country on Monday.

Adesech Sadik was welcomed at the airport by her family and taken home, having completed medical treatment in Kuwait.

Sadik made international headlines in March after her employer posted a Snapchat video of her begging for help while clinging to a window. The unnamed employer can be heard calling Sadik 'crazy' shortly before she fell onto a metal roof below.

The employer was later arrested for having failed to help the worker, also claiming the maid had attempted suicide.

"I wasn't trying to commit suicide, I was trying to escape from the woman who tried to kill me," Sadik later told Ethiopian reporters.

The maid later added that God had "protected her from a worse fate", had her employer pulled her back inside the apartment.

Kuwait's penal code rules that anyone who deliberately doesn't help another person in danger is liable to a sentence of up to three months in prison.

There are more than 600,000 domestic helpers in Kuwait – mainly from South Asia – with large numbers of complaints made every year of abuse, mistreatment and non-payment of wages, AFP reports.

An employer is also required to provide adequate living arrangements for their domestic help under chapter two of Kuwait's Act 68, 2015.

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