‘I was tortured,’ HK maid tells court
Print Edition
A FORMER Indonesian maid yesterday told a court for the first time how she was starved, beaten and ritually humiliated by her Hong Kong employers in a case that has sparked international outrage.
Erwiana Sulistyaningsih described in vivid detail how for months on end she lived on nothing but bread and rice, slept only four hours a day and was regularly punched and beaten by her former employer Law Wan-tung.
“I was tortured,” the 23-year-old, calmly told the packed courtroom in Hong Kong.
“She often hit me... sometimes she would hit me from behind, sometimes she hit me in the front. I was hit so often sometimes I got a headache... She hit me in my mouth (so) I had difficulty breathing.”
In one incident, Sulistyaningsih said she was stripped naked, covered with water and made to stand in front of a fan in the bathroom in the middle of winter.
Law faces 21 charges — also relating to two other former domestic helpers — including grievous bodily harm with intent, criminal intimidation and failure to pay wages.
Law kept her head down as her former maid described her alleged abuse, occasionally shooting her a glance.
Earlier, she had pleaded not guilty to all but one of the charges against her, admitting only that she had failed to arrange insurance for Sulistyaningsih.
Prosecutors allege the 44-year-old mother-of-two used a mop, vacuum cleaner tube and a clothes hanger as “weapons” against Sulistyaningsih over eight months.
“She put a vacuum cleaner into my mouth... and twisted it round my lips. It was bleeding and very painful,” the former maid said, adding that Law also pushed her off a ladder.
Pictures of Sulistyaningsih, who was admitted to a hospital in Indonesia in January, emaciated and in a critical condition, sparked outrage as they spread around the world on social media.
The case drew angry crowds on to the streets of Hong Kong in May.
Hong Kong is home to nearly 300,000 maids, mainly from Indonesia and the Philippines.
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