If only Sarah Saga were trying to crash a men's-only golf club. Then she and those like her might be guaranteed some sustained media coverage. As it is, this intrepid 23-year-old American mother is now holed up with her two children in the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah in a desperate bid for freedom.

Back in September Prince Bandar, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S., claimed in this newspaper it is "absolutely not true" that any American women were in his country against their will. Ms. Saga's flight to the consulate suggests otherwise. For under Saudi law no woman--even an American--is free to leave that country if her father or husband forbids it.

The good news is that Ms. Saga and her kids haven't been escorted out by U.S. Marines, as happened to Monica Stowers 13 years ago at our embassy in Riyadh. In response to Congressional hearings and reports in these columns exposing such abuses, U.S. Ambassador Robert Jordan vowed that no American would be expelled from the embassy under his watch.

Yet allowing them to stay is not the same as getting them out. Notwithstanding marginal progress in increasing some family contacts, the Saudis still insist on remaining the only country we know of where an American accused of no crime is not free to leave when she pleases.

Ms. Saga's story illustrates that tragedy. She found herself trapped in Saudi Arabia at age six, when her Saudi father defied a U.S. custody agreement by simply refusing to return her to America after a 1985 visit. There she has languished ever since. Yet she never gave up on America or her American mom. Married off to another Saudi, Ms. Saga used a computer to track her long-lost mother via the Internet and tell her of her hopes for escape.

Most Americans, we suspect, would find it hard to reconcile the facts of Ms. Saga's case with the new Saudi PR campaign invoking "shared values," or Prince Bandar's happy talk about "normal people living normal lives." Just ask Ms. Saga's mother, Debbie Dornier.

Ms. Dornier says her Saudi ex-husband (Sarah's father) has always vowed he'd see Sarah dead before seeing her return to America. Safely ensconced inside the consulate, this woman now faces the usual Saudi choice given those in her predicament: your freedom or your children.

Ms. Saga isn't the first American woman to report death threats from a Saudi father or husband. Nor is she the only one to have sought refuge at the Jeddah consulate. Another American woman spent the last two weeks with her three children in the same compound, with the Saudis saying she could go only if she left her American children behind. Surely there exist other American woman too terrified to risk even trying to get to a U.S. consulate or embassy.

From the start the Saudis have always asked why their cases merit more attention than the more numerous cases involving European parents. Ms. Saga's story ought to answer that. What makes Saudi Arabia so unpleasantly distinctive is that if you are unlucky enough to be an American female, your husband or father effectively remains your jailor if he so chooses, backed up by the full powers of the Saudi state.

If we have learned anything since 9/11, it's the strong national interest all Americans share in letting the world know there will be consequences for molesting an American abroad. So long as the Saudis insist on the dismal status quo, we can't understand why any U.S. Administration would even consider issuing another Saudi visa or repatriating another Saudi detainee from Guantanamo.