Overview
- Following Tuesday's opening statements, the first witness, a community nurse, told the jury she treated the woman in 2022 and heard that she could not leave the house and blamed herself for assaults.
- Prosecutors say the woman was held in slave-like conditions at a Point Cook home from January to October 2022, forced to do unpaid domestic work, locked in a garage, made to sleep on stairs, and limited to eating Weet-Bix.
- The Crown alleges Chee Kit Chong assaulted the woman, including kicking her and hitting her with a vacuum when she fell asleep massaging his legs, while Angie Yeh Liaw benefited from and helped enforce the control.
- Chong is charged with intentionally possessing a slave and three counts of assault, and Liaw is charged with assisting the offence, as both plead not guilty and their lawyers challenge the woman’s credibility and deny restricting food, sleep, or movement.
- A nurse’s report to federal police led to an AFP probe, hospital staff recorded a swollen ear, a foot cut, leg swelling, and signs of malnutrition, the complainant died in 2024 for unrelated reasons, and the trial before Judge Michael Cahill is expected to run for weeks with evidence to resume after Easter on April 8.