Exploitation of the poorest and weakest members of society from Asia’s child laborers to African miners and the victims of Western traffickers of young females is well documented. These practices are fuelled by profit and greed and organized by those who worship filthy lucre over humanity. But what is it about employers of domestics often rendering them so wretchedly cruel and sadistic when it comes to their maids? And it isn’t only men who seek to control and humiliate. Sadly, housewives rank among the worst offenders.

Just a few months ago my own part-time “lady what does” and her teenage daughter who was at the time employed as a live-in maid by a wealthy widow and her medical student daughter, broke down in sobs. “What’s the problem?” I asked, “Can I help?”

It turned out that her daughter’s female employers, who lived nearby, were regularly beating the girl for the most trivial of household “offenses” and during the previous night had tied her to her bed without food or water. I knew those two women. They considered themselves religious and outwardly represented the epitome of respectability. The story, therefore, seemed hardly credible. But from that day, things got worse.

With my encouragement, when the mother eventually got up the courage to approach the pair and ask for the return of the girl, they reacted angrily warning they would accuse the youngster of stealing. It was then that my husband and I knew we had to intervene. We told the girl’s employers that we knew all about their vicious threats and in the event their maid was falsely accused, we would personally ensure the police were appraised.

As a result, the girl was literally thrown into the street in her pajamas not only without her personal belongings but also without several years’ wages, which the women had always maintained they were saving on her behalf toward her future. Why the venomous reaction? According to the young maid, her employers had changed toward her once she spontaneously announced that she, too, aspired to becoming a doctor one day when the older women flew into a rage, saying “how dare you compare yourself with my daughter. You are a nobody.”

Perhaps this is the key to why ordinary people sometimes go into “Jekyll and Hyde” mode when dealing with their live-in domestics, especially foreigners in a strange land often without the language, friends or family. They know the maid relies on them for their very sustenance and so, for once, they feel a sense of empowerment, using their hapless employee as a buttress for their bad moods and someone to make them feel omnipotent and superior. Just having someone to wash up after them makes them feel like “a somebody”.

These women happened to be Egyptians but I’ve seen Westerners fly into blind rages just because people they refer to as “servants” (and you thought the age of slavery was gone) had forgotten to dust behind a cupboard or overcooked the carrots.

In some cases, foreign maids, especially from Southeast Asia, are multilingual university grads with more paper qualifications than their bosses, yet they are looked upon as inferior to the household pet. In spring 2004 two Filipino domestics, who had worked in Hong Kong, and were leading the charge for the rights of their colleagues, competed for seats in the Philippine Congress.

Hong Kong has a particularly bad record of such abuse. Some years ago Imelda Cacatian, a Filipino, suffered burns when her 74-year-old “madam” purposely ran a hot iron over her arm just because the maid had inadvertently scorched a camisole. Other Filipinos working in Hong Kong have reported employers pouring boiling water over them, beatings and rape.

Singapore’s record is nothing to be proud of either. Between 1998 and 2003 around 20 Indonesian maids committed suicide by jumping from tall buildings, reported as being due to “psychological pressure” induced by exploitation, sadistic abuse and sexual harassment. In one case a woman poured boiling water over the housemaid before striking her on the head with a cleaver.

Another report tells of a 37-year-old woman and her 13-year-old son sexually assaulting their maid, breaking her arm and forcing her to swallow dog excrement.

As horrific is the report on these pages of the 25-year-old Indonesian maid suffering amputations due to onset of gangrene after being trussed up and left in a bathroom for a month, it is far from being an isolated incident. Indeed, the Indonesian Embassy in the Kingdom says over 2,000 maids have been repatriated so far this year complaining of maltreatment and has asked for government protections to be put in place.

But there are also heartwarming stories. I know an Egyptian judge who treated his elderly maid as he would a mother, going as far as to set her up in style when she was too old to work and his children had grown.

And just the other day, while strolling around Zamalek — a tree-lined up-market Cairo residential area — I came across a shabbily dressed elderly former domestic, who lives in a picturesque cottage attached to an embassy and runs a dusty shop from one of its front rooms. “Any thoughts of selling?” I inquired erroneously believing he might jump at the chance.

“Definitely not,” came the reply. “A kind Swiss lady willed this place to me after decades of service and as long as I am alive, here I will stay. Working for her was the happiest time of my life and selling would betray that memory.”

I later found out that the embassy in question had offered Am Ahmed (not his real name) huge sums to quit his home, only to be turned down time after time. Would I have shown such loyalty and devotion in his place or happily taken the fat wad of cash?

I left feeling slightly ashamed. Here was a better “man” than I. It was then I remembered the wise words of my own father: “Any fool can be wealthy depending on how many principles he is prepared to compromise toward that aim. Never, ever judge a book by its cover.”

Those who exploit the weak and the vulnerable to boost their own pathetic egos are the poorest indeed.

All the money, education and status in the world cannot replace an honest and compassionate heart.

Am Ahmed alone amid his stock of chipped plates and yellowing books could teach us all that lesson so many in today’s selfish and consumerist societies have long forgotten.

— Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback.