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Chee Kit “Max” Chong and his wife, Angie Liaw, faced the court in Melbourne’s Victoria County on Tuesday as the prosecution presented its case against them.
Chong stands accused of deliberately keeping a woman as a slave from January to October 2022 and faces three separate assault charges. Liaw is accused of aiding Chong in maintaining the woman’s servitude.
The couple has entered pleas of not guilty, firmly denying all the charges against them.
Prosecutor Shaun Ginsbourg SC detailed how Chong first encountered the woman at a church in Malaysia back in 2015, describing their bond as akin to that of a mother and son.
The prosecution claims Chong repeatedly attempted to extract money from the woman, including a request for $30,000 shortly before she relocated to Australia with the couple, a sum she sought from a fellow church member.
After moving to Australia in 2017, the victim lived with the couple initially, before Ginsbourg said they left to Malaysia without telling her and she became homeless.
The woman allegedly moved back in with the couple in January 2022, to help Liaw with their newborn baby, which is when the prosecutor said the slavery began.
By this point, she had multiple vulnerabilities as she was homeless, on a tourist visa with no independent income and isolated from her family in Malaysia, he said.
“Chong described her to other people as his ‘maid or helper’,” Ginsbourg said.
“Mr Chong threatened and coerced (the victim) to provide domestic services, repeatedly told her she had to work to repay supposed debts.
“When (the victim) failed at her duties, or failed to complete them to Chong’s satisfaction, he would often hit or kick her, or punish her by telling her she could not sleep or eat that day.”
Ginsbourg alleged Chong kicked the woman in the head, hit her with a vacuum after she fell asleep while massaging his legs and knocked her head into a wall.
Chong allegedly banned her from eating certain foods and “said she could only eat Weet-Bix”, the prosecutor said as he read messages where the woman asked Chong for permission to use the kitchen facilities.
He said the woman was at times forced to sleep on the stairs or inside the garage, instead of a bedroom at their Point Cook home, in Melbourne’s south-west.
She was not allowed to leave the home without Chong, including for medical help after his alleged assaults, the jury heard.
Chong’s barrister Diana Price said her client never assaulted the woman, denied ever possessing a slave and asked jurors to question why the victim may have exaggerated her claims.
She said Chong denied restricting the woman’s freedoms, including her access to food, how and when she slept, and whether she was able to leave the home.
Price asked the jury to look at whether the woman’s contribution to the household was different from what you might expect for a family of three adults and two small children.
Ginsbourg accused Liaw of benefiting from the woman’s domestic services and asking Chong to give her instructions or tasks, helping Chong in controlling her.
Liaw’s barrister Daniel Gurvich KC said she did not commit any crime as there was no evidence she did beyond a reasonable doubt, and the jury’s true verdict will be a verdict of not guilty.
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