A former volunteer at a Poughkeepsie religious charity claims that the director lured her into a personal relationship with a marriage proposal and then trapped her into a life of involuntary servitude.
Everlyne Otieno accused Peter Braman of labor trafficking, wage theft, and racial discrimination, in a Jan. 5 complaint filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
“For more than two years, the complaint states, “Otieno was forced under violence and threat of violence to work all day, every day as a domestic worker.”
Braman’s bankruptcy attorney, Michael A. Fakhoury, denied the accusations, without elaboration, in a formal answer filed on Jan. 7.
Otieno is a black woman of Kenyan descent. Braman is the director and owner of the Braman Foundation of Charities in Poughkeepsie.
The foundation was founded in 1997 by Richard Braman “to help support and uplift humanity,” according to its website, and sponsors missions in Africa, India, and New York prisons. Its programs are designed to counteract addiction, mental illness and materialism, and to inspire “salvation and the path to true love.”
Otieno says she met Peter Braman in 2018, and a few days later he asked her out to dinner. He recruited her to volunteer for his charity, the complaint states, and said he wanted a romantic relationship.
Within weeks, he proposed and they began attending premarital counseling, according to the complaint. Then she lost her job and he offered her a spare bedroom in his house and a $700 monthly allowance.
When she moved in, he allegedly told her that she would have to pay $500 a month for rent and food. She negotiated the fee down to $200 and suggested that it be deducted from her allowance. Braman allegedly said there would be no allowance and threatened to call immigration authorities.
Otieno claims she worked every day: cooking, housekeeping, laundry, yardwork, and taking care of Braman’s elderly mother, who had dementia and needed constant attention. She volunteered two to three hour a day for the foundation.
She was paid erratically, from $100 to $240 a week, or not at all, according to the complaint, and in two years she was given only three weekends off.
Otieno says Braman became increasingly abusive and violent. He allegedly said she was a good-for-nothing African; Africans are slow and dumb; he wanted to marry an African or Indian woman because they are submissive; and she was becoming too American.
In August 2020, when Braman was out of town, a friend helped Otieno escape, according to the complaint.
Otieno sued Braman for wage theft in 2024, in U.S. District Court, Albany. According to Otieno, attempts to resolve the dispute in mediation or by negotiations failed.
This past September, Braman petitioned for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in Poughkeepsie, automatically freezing the federal lawsuit.
Now Otieno seeks to stop him from using bankruptcy to cancel his debts owed to her.
Braman declared $39,846 in assets and $148,491 in liabilities. He lists Otieno as a creditor, based on the federal lawsuit, and shows the amount owed as unknown.
Otieno has filed a claim for $507,316.
She is represented by the Worker Justice Center of New York, in Hawthorne.
