Man sentenced to six years for enslaving Indonesian woman in Melbourne

A man who beat a woman he kept as a slave in Melbourne's west will spend at least four years behind bars.

Chee Kit Chong, a 47-year-old Malaysian national, bashed and starved the Indonesian woman aged in her 60s between February and October 2022, while she lived with Chong and his family in their Point Cook home.

He was found guilty earlier this year of intentionally keeping a slave and assault, while his wife Angie Liaw was acquitted.

Judge Michael Cahill sentenced Chong to a total of six years' imprisonment for forcing the woman into domestic servitude and assaulting her on at least one occasion, describing the abuse Chong inflicted on her as "callous and cruel".

"You treated her as a slave," Judge Cahill told the court this morning.

Slavery, a federal crime in Australia, carries a maximum term of 25 years behind bars.

Appearing at the County Court hearing via video link from Ravenhall Correctional Centre, Chong remained emotionless and looked directly ahead as Judge Cahill told the court Chong denied the woman proper medical care and food, controlled her movements and deprived her of sleep.

Judge Cahill told the court that Chong admonished the woman over text message if she did not perform her work to his standards, and "hit her for the smallest mistake".

Throughout the time the woman was kept in Chong's Point Cook home, the court heard he smashed her head through a wall, kicked her in the face.

Chong was also initially charged with hitting her with a vacuum cleaner shaft, but that charge was ultimately dropped.

Woman found by police with injuries

The court heard that on at least one occasion, Chong told her she could either sleep on the stairs or in the garage.

Judge Cahill said Chong had told friends that he was paying the woman up to $5,000 per month for her work, which was untrue.

The court heard the woman would request crackers and other small food items from a local charity to eat because they were "easy to hide" from Chong.

The woman left Chong's home in October that year and was unaccounted-for for over several days.

Police then found her and transported her to hospital in a taxi, where she arrived looking malnourished with a swollen ear and leg, a cut on her foot and bruising near her eye.

In what Judge Cahill described as "chilling" irony, the court heard Chong told his wife that she should not have let the woman leave their home.

Chong's wife Angie Liaw was initially charged with helping him keep the woman as a slave, but her charges were dropped during the six-week trial earlier this year.

She did not attend Chong's sentencing hearing.

The couple met the victim in Malaysia in 2015 where they became close, the court heard.

In the years before she lived with Chong and his family, the woman had come to Australia, where she became homeless and worked as a street vendor.

The woman had moved into the couple's home in early 2022 to help around the house following the birth of Chong and Ms Liaw's second child.

The court heard Chong repeatedly badgered the woman for large sums of money, which she borrowed from her relatives back in Indonesia and from an op-shop she worked at, because he was struggling to pay rent and hospital bills from the birth.

The woman, who cannot be named because victims of slavery crimes cannot be identified under law, died in 2024 of natural causes.

Chong will be eligible for parole in 2030 and will likely be deported back to Malaysia after serving his sentence.