HK employer gets 22 months for assaulting housemaid

HK employer gets 22 months for assaulting housemaid

HONG KONG (AFP): An "inhumane" Hong Kong employer who beat her Indonesian maid with a toilet brush and scalded her with a hot iron has been sentenced to 22 months imprisonment, a report said Saturday.

The sentence against Leung Wai-kuen, 33, was one of the most severe ever imposed in the territory for abuse of a domestic helper.

In her ruling Magistrate Kelly Shui slammed Leung's treatment of 22-year-old maid Sutinah Samian as "inhumane".

"It is completely unacceptable. You beat her in this way, you did not treat her as a human being," Shui was quoted as saying by the South China Morning Post.

The court earlier heard how Leung beat Samian about the head, waist, nose and arms with a toilet brush for 15 minutes until it snapped because she had not finished the ironing.

After falling asleep at the ironing board, the maid was awaken the next morning by Leung pressing a hot iron on her neck.

Leung, who was convicted of wounding and causing grievous bodily harm, said she plans to appeal.

Samian testified she was paid 200 dollars a month after going to work for Leung in June 1999, and that her 15 months of employment "was like serving as a prisoner rather than working as a maid."

She started work every day at 4:00 am, and had to help out at her employer's watch workshop from 7:00 pm, and was never given a day off.

She intends to sue for 58,000 dollars (US$7,445) in unpaid salary.

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for Hong Kong's Association of Indonesian Migrant Workers slammed the sentence as insufficient to deter physical and sexual abuse by employers.