A few years ago, Linda Howard made headlines when she and her husband fled the United States after being charged with trafficking, abusing, and repeatedly sexually assaulting an Ethiopian domestic worker. Now Howard, a former U.S. diplomat, is making news again (this time with a different husband) after a recent court ruling on a case that sounds eerily familiar. WaPo reports:
A jury in federal court in Alexandria, Va., agreed Monday that the former envoy, Linda Howard, and her Australian husband, Russell Howard, forced an Ethiopian maid into sexual slavery in 2007, repeatedly raping her. Linda Howard was ordered to pay $3 million in damages to the now 30-year-old woman, identified only as Sarah Roe, who lives in Virginia.
This is very familiar to the previous case, as WaPo notes. Last time she
Roe’s allegations closely track those of the Jane Doe, who won a civil suit against the Howards in 2012. Doe traveled with the couple from Yemen to Linda Howard’s next posting in Tokyo. She also alleged that Russell Howard repeatedly raped her, that Linda Howard told her to keep him happy, and that she was isolated and threatened. After she fled in the middle of the night for home, Russell Howard followed her and had charges filed against her in Ethiopia, she alleged.
In that case, Howard was also ordered to pay about $3.3 million in damages to the victim. She and her husband ended up settling in 2015 for an undisclosed sum.
Clearly, there’s a dangerous pattern here. How do we ban this woman from hiring someone ever again?