This story was published in partnership with Government Accountability Project.

Top photo: Colombian au pair Natalie Castillo, photographed near her apartment in Vienna.

Natalie Castillo dreamed of attending medical school in the United States. But before she started applying to schools, Castillo, then 22, wanted to perfect her English by immersing herself in the language in a way she couldnt do at home in Colombia.

She signed up to become an au pair, one of the roughly 20,000 young people overwhelmingly women from abroad who come to the U.S. each year as part of the State Departments exchange visitor program.

These au pairs are granted J-1 visas that temporarily allow them to live in the U.S. in return for providing child care for host families a program currently on pause for new arrivals due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The State Department authorizes private companies to contract with these young people and charge them thousands of dollars in fees to cover their placement and provide assistance while they are in the U.S. Those companies also charge host families around $10,000 a year to hire an au pair.

This was the arrangement Castillo had with Cultural Care Au Pair, the largest of 15 government-licensed au pair companies, when she arrived in Seattle in April 2016. She spent a little over a year working for one host family, then changed families and moved to New Jersey. There, Castillo says she was forced to work 11-to-12-hour days taking care of two young boys who regularly hit, kicked and bit her.

She said she felt pressure from the family and Cultural Care to continue in the job. Then things really fell apart in August 2017. The boys were fighting, and Castillo tried to separate them. She threatened to call their father. When she turned around to go make the call, they attacked her from behind, punching and kicking her, she said.

Her host mother tried to apologize, but Castillo was done. She called Cultural Care and asked to change families.

Castillo was surprised when a company representative told her they already knew about potential danger at that home. It was all well documented that the children were biting and kicking and hitting in reports from a previous au pair, the representative told her on the call, which Castillo recorded and provided to HuffPost.

Castillo was in fact the third au pair to report an injury to Cultural Care while working for this family, according to the company representative. The au pair before her had been hospitalized for a hand injury, which the Cultural Care representative also acknowledged on the call. (Both previous au pairs declined to comment for this article.)

After Castillos complaint, Cultural Care removed the family from the program. But government regulations also required the company to report the abuse and complaint to the State Department. The Cultural Care representative told Castillo several times, on the recordings, that nothing had been reported to the government, even a month after the initial incident.

Instead, Cultural Care tried to send Castillo back to Colombia eight months early and asked her to cover part of the cost of the flight even though she had paid the company roughly $1,500 to participate in the program for two full years. If you want to go to Cali, the representative told her, referring to flights to her home city in Colombia, then you need to get money from your family. The other option the company suggested was for her to remain in the United States, undocumented. If she didnt take the flight the company had arranged, the representative said, youll be on your own to figure out how youre going to get home.

According to Castillo, in the immediate aftermath of the attack, her former host mother claimed shed deliberately hit one of the boys with her phone during it, which provided the company with an easy justification for her removal. The host later retracted the allegation which Cultural Care acknowledged in one of the recorded calls but the company, citing what her host said, still used it as the excuse to fire her. You have to go home, the representative said. You have to go home tomorrow.

Weve worked with upper management, the Cultural Care representative told Castillo. This is the decision thats been made.

Before she could be sent home, a friend contacted the State Department on her behalf, detailing both the alleged abuse and the companys failure to report. The department intervened to stop her deportation and allowed Castillo to find a new host family. But it does not appear to have taken any action against Cultural Care.

That, unfortunately, seems to be the norm when it comes to these companies. A HuffPost and Government Accountability Project investigation looked at thousands of pages of State Department documents, surveyed 125 au pairs and spoke to more than 40 current and former employees of au pair companies. The investigation found a disturbing pattern of alleged exploitation and abuse that the companies regularly failed to report. The federal government did not take action to punish companies it caught failing to report issues.

Every year, au pairs report traumas to au pair companies, ranging from coerced labor to physical and sexual abuse. The au pairs interviewed for this article claimed that host children had threatened them with knives, that host parents had confiscated their passports or locked them in a basement as a punishment. Many au pairs said the companies dismissed their allegations when they reported these incidents.

We do not comment on individual cases out of respect for all program participants, said a Cultural Care spokesperson. Having any au pair look back upon their program experience in a negative way is incredibly disappointing. We will continue to strive to provide the highest levels of support and learn from any opportunities to improve.

There are also more general concerns about the labor conditions and wages the au pair program in the U.S. enables, because it is classified as a cultural exchange program rather than a work program. Au pairs live with their employers and are expected to work full time, or more, for wages that work out to as low as $4.35 an hour. The low price is the programs main selling point for host families who would otherwise have to pay a nanny as much as $25 an hour. Watchdogs say that as a diplomatic agency, the State Department lacks the oversight capability on these issues that the Department of Labor could provide, and that the programs quasi-regulated status makes it ripe for abuse.

Last July, a federal judge in Denver approved a $65.5 million class-action settlement with Cultural Care and 14 other au pair companies over claims of unpaid wages and what au pairs alleged to be illegal collusion on au pair pay rates. In December 2019, a Massachusetts federal appeals court required that au pairs in that state be paid overtime and the state minimum wage of $12 per hour.

The Au Pair Program strengthens U.S. diplomacy goals, provides au pairs with valuable career skills and prepares American children to succeed, said the Alliance for International Exchange, a lobbying group representing eight au pair companies. Department of State regulations support the health and safety of au pairs and American host families alike. They include monthly check ins, 24-hour emergency help, weekly hour limits, and two weeks of paid vacation.

The Alliance cited surveys that they said showed most au pairs in the program had positive experiences. Those surveys were produced by the au pair companies themselves.

Au pairs who come to a new country with little social support, limited income, and few contacts beyond their employer are often left with few places to turn for help. And because au pairs live with their boss, if something happens, they may be left without a safe place to go.

The companies are their best hope for protection, but the longer people work at the agency, the better they are at detaching themselves from your situation, said Freya, another former Cultural Care au pair from the United Kingdom, who asked to be identified by only her first name.

When Freya told company officials about being forced to constantly work extra hours, she says she was told not to officially report this to avoid making things awkward with her hosts. After 11 months in the program, she left without telling anyone.

I simply cant do it anymore, Freya wrote to a Cultural Care representative when she returned home. Instead of support, she said the representative asked her to explain her decision to leave so her former hosts could have closure.

Coming here, Ive been made to feel like someones slave who doesnt have the right to speak up, Freya said.

Au Pair Abuse Allegations Go Unreported

State Department documents , obtained from public databases and through a Government Accountability Project Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, show repeated failures to crack down on au pair companies that dont report regulatory violations and allegations of abuse.