When will it end?
THESE are just some of the reported cases of domestic workers abuse in the last decade. The cases aren’t isolated. Indonesian domestic worker Adelina Lisao was not the first to die at the hands of her employers. Until there are laws that protect domestic workers, such abuse is likely to go on.
2001 28-year-old Indonesian maid Sonirih Casnawi was pronounced dead on arrival at the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Hospital. She had at least 45 injuries and internal haemorrhages, including a ruptured pancreas when she was brought to the hospital. Her employer was sentenced to 20 years jail for manslaughter in 2005.
2004 19-year-old Nirmala Bonat from from Nusa Tenggara Timur (West Timor) suffered months of abuse, including being burnt with a hot iron, scalded with boiling water and savagely beaten. Her employer, Yim Pek Ha was sentenced to 12 years in jail after she was found guilty on three counts of causing grievous hurt to Bonat.
2011 Housewife M. Poongavanam was sentenced to eight years’ jail and fined RM20,000 for voluntarily causing grievous hurt to her Indonesian maid with a hot iron.
2012 Immigration Department officers found 105 foreign women held captive at a maid agency in Bandar Baru Klang. Besides being treated roughly, some of the women claimed that their food was rationed by the agency and that they were even forced to eat paper as punishment if they tried to ask for their salaries.
2013 ● Malaysian couple, Soh Chew Tong, 44, and his wife Chin Chui Ling, 42, were sentenced to 24 years in jail for starving their Cambodian maid, Mey Sichan to death. She weighed just 26kg (57lbs) and had bruises on her body. Police said she died from acute gastritis and ulcers likely caused by lack of food over a long period. The 23-year-old had been working for the family for eight months.
● Businessman Mohd Shukur Suradi and his teacher wife Daeng Norulasyikin Bachok were found guilty of causing harm to their Indonesian domestic worker Marsini in 2012 with a knife, golf club, belt, hot oil, clothes hanger, ladle and hot spoon. They were also found guilty of trafficking Marsini, 20, into the country. The High Court later acquitted the couple as the judge found the prosecution had not established a prima facie case against the two.
● Thirty-year-old domestic worker Maria Roberta Sain – who worked for her employers in Sungai Bestari, Kuala Lumpur – ran to the authorities alleging she had been physically abused by her employers for eight months.
2014 ● An Indonesian maid working in Tangga Batu, Melaka, escaped from her employer’s home where she was allegedly sexually abused by an 85-year-old man.
● Filipina maid Nenita Batiancila Elcamel was carried out by policemen from her former employer’s condominium in Kelana Jaya, Petaling Jaya, with her head drenched in blood and bruises on her body. Neighbours who suspected she was being abused reported their suspicians to the police.
Nenita’s former employer pleaded guilty to hitting her and was fined RM4,000 and jailed for a day.
● 32-year-old Indonesian maid Meriance Kabu was rescued from her employers who had tortured her for eight months until her teeth were knocked out after they kicked and stomped on her face. She also had a hard object shoved into her private parts and was not properly fed, among other forms of abuse.
● Fong Kong Meng, 58, and his wife Teoh Ching Yen, 56, were sentenced to death by hanging for starving their domestic worker, Miss Isti, to death. She weighed 26kg at the time of her death.
2016 ● Suyanti Sutrinso, 19, was found unconscious by a drain in Mutiara Damansara, Petaling Jaya, after she escaped from her employer. Her employer, Rozita Mohamad Ali, was sentenced to eight years imprisonment in March 2018 for causing grievous hurt to Suyanti with a kitchen knife, mop, hanger and umbrella.
2017 ● Lim Lee Poh, 47, a single mother of two was sentenced to three years’ jail by a magistrate’s court in Penang for scalding her domestic helper, Koay Ley Kheng, 26.
● Police arrest a 48-year-old doctor and her 50-year-old bus driver/businessman husband who allegedly abused their 60-year-old Indonesian maid at their home in Skudai, Johor. They did not pay her wages for eight years. The arrests came following a report lodged by the Indonesian consulate-general.