A Melbourne cleaner who exploited an elderly woman who treated him \u201clike her son\u201d has been slammed for using her like a slave. <\/p>\n
Chee Kit \u201cMax\u201d Chong, 47, was jailed for six years in the County Court of Victoria on Friday morning after a jury found him guilty of intentionally possessing a slave and assault earlier this year. <\/p>\n
\u201cSlavery is a horrible crime it strips people of their fundamental freedom and dignity,\u201d Judge Michael Cahill said. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou used financial, physical and psychological coercion to enforce your control.\u201d<\/p>\n
The woman died of natural causes unrelated to the case in 2024 in her mid 60s. <\/p>\n
The court was told Chong, who was born in Malaysia, had met his victim in Sabah where she was working as a church pastor. <\/p>\n
Over time, their relationship developed into a \u201cmother-son\u201d dynamic and the woman would borrow money from family and church members to help Chong out. <\/p>\n
When Chong and his partner Angie Liaw moved to Australia in 2016, he invited the woman, given the pseudonym ST, to come and live with them. <\/p>\n
She arrived on a tourist visa in March 2017 and lived with them for six months but was left homeless and vulnerable when Chong and Ms Liaw left the country in September, eight days after their wedding.<\/p>\n
Judge Cahill said Chong and Ms Liaw did not contact ST when they returned to Australia in October.<\/p>\n
Over the following few years, Chong contacted the woman several times to ask for money, which she obtained from family overseas, until he asked her to come and live with them for a month in Point Cook in Melbourne\u2019s southwest in early 2022.<\/p>\n
He bragged to neighbours and friends that he\u2019d hired a homeless woman as a maid and paid her $5000 a month \u2013 which Judge Cahill said was a lie. <\/p>\n
Ms Liaw was about to have the couple\u2019s second child, and Chong asked ST to help with a cultural one-month period of post-partum confinement. <\/p>\n
She agreed, and Judge Cahill said Chong soon turned on her, claiming she had caused him to lose access to a company credit card.<\/p>\n
He demanded she pay him $1m of stay and work as his maid to compensate him. <\/p>\n
Judge Cahill said Chong beat the woman, restricted her access to food and sleep and controlled the woman\u2019s movements over the following months until she fled in September 2022. <\/p>\n
\u201cYour treatment of her was callous and cruel, it stopped only when she left your home and it was discovered only when she needed medical care,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the time you met her, ST was generous and loyal to you, she treated you like a son.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou exploited her vulnerabilities to exploit her \u2026 heartlessly you took advantage of her good nature.\u201d<\/p>\n
At trial, Chong maintained he did not keep ST in slave-like conditions but suggested his behaviour \u201cmight have amounted to elder abuse\u201d.<\/p>\n
A charge of assisting or encouraging the slavery offence against Ms Liaw was dismissed partway through the trial by Judge Cahill, who found the evidence could not prove she had assisted Chong to control the woman.<\/p>\n
The court was told Ms Liaw had \u201cstuck by\u201d Chong and was relying on the charity of friends to keep their family in Melbourne close to Chong. <\/p>\n
He will be eligible for parole in May 2030 after serving four years of his sentence. <\/p>\n