Italian envoy in S.F. accused of forced labor

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Source: San Francisco Chronicle

(06-28) 10:27 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- An employee of the Italian Consulate in San Francisco and his wife are facing federal charges that they lured a Brazilian woman with promises of a better life but instead kept her as an indentured servant, court records show.

Giuseppe Penzato, 54, and his wife of eight years, Kesia Penzato, 33, were arrested Friday and charged in U.S. District Court in San Francisco with forced labor. The two are also defendants in a civil suit filed by the woman, identified in court documents only as Jane Doe, accusing them of human trafficking.

The couple, meanwhile, have filed a countersuit against the woman, claiming that she invaded their privacy and damaged "their good reputation and dignity within the community and the Italian Consulate" by secretly recording their private conversations.

Those conversations included discussions about Giuseppe Penzato's "employment with the general consulate of Italy and other personal matters," the countersuit says.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/28/BAHM1K3K0G.DTL