The Texan Doctor and the Disappeared Saudi Princesses – Four daughters in the royal family were kept drugged and imprisoned for almost two decades. A physician who tried to free them speaks out for the first time.

Here’s why the women were disappeared:

>The King had fathered as many as thirty-five children with a multitude of wives. Hala and her sisters were born to Alanoud Al-Fayez, a Jordanian noblewoman, whom Abdullah had married when she was fifteen and he was about fifty. For a time, the princesses had enjoyed relative freedom, studying at expensive schools and travelling with their mother. “Princess Hala had yachted, skied, traveled on private jets, ate in Michelin starred restaurants, and slept in Palaces and 5 star hotels,” Burdick wrote.

Things soured when King Abdullah turned against Al-Fayez, blaming her for their failure to produce a son. Al-Fayez recounted in a filing to the U.N. that she fled to London in 2003, hoping that her adult daughters would be able to join her. Instead, they were locked up. “I was able to leave,” she wrote. “But my girls’ destiny is shattered more day by day.”