Maid was overworked, had little to eat, and beaten all over her body

April 1, 2009

She fled to avoid beatings

The Straits Times News

By Diana Othman THE last straw was when 'Aunty' kicked her and threatened to tell her employers she was falling asleep on the job. Indonesian maid Susilawati Kusnata had woken up at 3.30am as usual to clean the floors. But she could not help nodding off, which drew the wrath of her employer's mother, Teng Chen Lian, 67. Teng stamped on her thighs, slapped and hit her on the head, and then pushed her hard enough to make her fall. 'I had to get away because Aunty would keep complaining and I would keep getting beaten,' recalled the 23-year-old. So when Teng was in the toilet and everyone else was still asleep, she unlocked the kitchen window and climbed out of the fifth-storey Pasir Ris flat onto the narrow parapet below. Clinging to bamboo clothes poles and stepping gingerly on air-conditioning units, she reached safety. 'I was very scared but I did not want to suffer beatings from my employers anymore so I had no choice,' she told The Straits Times on Monday. Once free, she ran until she saw a mosque. She burst into tears when someone asked if her employer had hurt her. At the Indonesian Embassy, where she has been taking shelter, she recounted her four months of being punched, kicked and assaulted with kitchen utensils. Her former employers - Loke Phooi Ling, 38, her husband, Stanley Kuah Kian Chong, 38, and Loke's mother, Teng - faced 41 counts of abuse among them.