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German NGO accused a Saudi diplomat in Berlin and his two wives of allegedly beating their 30-year-old Indonesian maid, as several media outlets reported on Wednesday.

The German Institute for Human Rights (GBV) said it would appeal to the Germany’s highest court to press the claims of the maid, identified under the pseudonym ‘Dewi Ratnasari’ for her protection, after a labor tribunal rejected her lawsuit earlier this month, citing her employer’s diplomatic immunity.

Dewi also alleged that she worked 18 hours a day and was never paid her monthly salary of ¤750, according to GBV.

The maid fled the diplomat’s home in October and sought the help of Ban Ying, a Berlin-based association that counsels Southeast Asian workers.

Ban Ying, who asked the GBV for assistance, said they would not have publicized the case if they had doubts about the truth of Dewi’s allegations.

Dewi’s passport was kept by her employer and she was not allowed to go outside, according to the GBV.

“She was beaten by all members of the family, including the children and the parents, with sticks or their hands,” Nivedita Prasad of Ban Yin told Deutsche Welle.

The diplomat and his family also refused to call Dewi by name, instead addressing her with an Arabic expletive for excrement, Prasad said.

Der Spiegel reported that Dewi told Ban Ying in November that an employment agency in Jakarta sent her to work as a household employee in the United Arab Emirates before transferring her to Saudi Arabia.

In April 2009, Dewi accompanied her Saudi employer to Germany, where he was to serve as an attache at the Saudi Arabian embassy and she was to work as his servant.

However, Dewi said that she also had to serve the diplomat’s wheelchair-confined wife and their four daughters — ranging in age between 12 and 17 — including putting on their shoes.

Dewi said she was only given a pillow and a thin sheet and had to sleep on the floor of the daughters’ bedroom.

The maid told the Berlin police she was the alleged victim of constant abuse and humiliation at the hands of the diplomat and his family.

According to Dewi’s allegations, the diplomat’s wife once threw a bottle of perfume at her head, she was regularly beaten on the hands and forearms with a stick and occasionally was dealt blows to the head.

She alleged that the diplomat expressly allowed everyone in the house to beat her, including the wife, the daughters and his 5-year-old son.

Philipp von Berg, a lawyer representing the Saudi diplomat, told the German national news agency DPA that the allegations were untrue and could only be brought to court in Saudi Arabia.

Dewi is not the first Indonesian maid working in Germany to allege torture at the hands of her employers.

In January 2008, the plight of an Indonesian servant working for the cultural attache at the Yemeni Embassy in Berlin came to light.

For two years, the woman was effectively imprisoned in the attache’s apartment on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. Her passport was taken and she claimed she was beaten regularly.

She said that her daily rations consisted of a slice of bread and a bowl of rice with a tomato and two chilies. When the woman was admitted into a hospital in May 2007, she weighed only 35 kilograms. She was diagnosed with tuberculosis and it took her an entire year to recover.