The story of Sarah Saga, an American citizen holed up with her two children in the American Consulate at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has a ring that is all too familiar. Ms. Saga, kidnapped in 1985 at the age of 6 by her Saudi father when she was on a visit to Saudi Arabia, faces a choice: Go home to America without her son and daughter or leave the consulate to face beating or even death at the hands of her father or the husband to whom she was married off.

On the CNN show “American Morning” Thursday, Ms. Saga’s mother, Debra Dornier, told her daughter’s harrowing story. While initially after the kidnapping young Sarah’s father would let her speak to her mother, all communication between the two was soon cut off for about 15 years. That was until Ms. Saga made contact with her mother through the Internet in 2000. With communication restored, Ms. Saga and her mother tried to convince Ms. Saga’s husband to take her to visit Ms. Dornier in America.

When Ms. Saga and her mother decided talk was futile, they began plotting her escape. “Her son got chicken pox, postpone,” Ms. Dornier said.” Her daughter got chicken pox. Sunday was the first or second day that her daughter wasn’t contagious anymore. She convinced her husband to take her to see her grandparents who lived 15 minutes away from the consulate, and the next morning she took her children and walked over to the consulate and she got herself in.”

At that point, one might assume, Ms. Saga should have been free — that is, if one were not familiar with our government’s history of fecklessness on such matters. Ms. Saga is just one in a long line of American women who have run athwart of Saudi law, which forbids any woman, even an American, from leaving the country if her father or husband refuses to give permission. Just over the last two weeks, another American woman, Debbie Magrabi, sought refuge at the Jeddah consulate with her three children; she was pressured into leaving and going back to her abusive husband last week.

The American ambassador, Robert Jordan, in the shadow of congressional hearings exposing such abuses, is vowing that the same thing won’t happen to Ms. Saga on his watch. However, it does not sound like things were going well. On CNN, Ms. Dornier said that her daughter had been coerced by Saudi and American officials into signing papers giving up custody of her children. On Friday, a State Department spokesman acknowledged that Ms. Saga had changed her mind about giving up her children — but one has to wonder what kind of games are being played here.

It was last June that the House Government Reform Committee, headed up by Republican Dan Burton, put a spotlight on the fact that there are nearly 100 such cases of American citizens, mainly women and children, held in Saudi Arabia against their will. One mother told of how she hired people, for hundreds of thousands of dollars, to kidnap her daughter back from Saudi Arabia. Quite the predicament when one has to turn to the black market to safeguard the rights of one’s children. One can only wonder what fate awaits the brave Ms. Saga, who may soon face off against the Saudi Arabia authorities, and hope that she gets help from her president or his Department of State.