Hong Kong employer fined for forcing maid to kowtow 100 times

Jul 3, 2009, 0:52 GMT

Hong Kong - A Hong Kong couple assaulted their Filipino maid and forced her to kowtow 100 times after she served an inadequately cooked meal, a court report said Friday.

Secretary Wan Sau-yee grabbed maid Julieta Binggas Selga by the hair and pushed her head to the floor, forcing her to bow down repeatedly. She also slapped her across the face and head three times.

Following the incident in March, Wan, 37, pleaded guilty to two charges of assault causing actual bodily harm, said the report in the Hong Kong newspaper The Standard.

She appeared Thursday in court with her husband, Henry Kwok, 42, who admitted one charge of common assault for hitting the maid on the head and neck with a rolled up newspaper later the same night.

Their lawyer claimed Wan was angry when she discovered the maid had not thoroughly cooked a meal for her 7-year-old son. It was Wan's wedding anniversary, and she had planned to celebrate it with a meal.

Kwok was fined 650 US dollars and ordered to pay Selga 390 dollars in compensation.

However, the magistrate deferred sentencing on Wan to allow for the preparation of probation and community service reports, warning her that she faced a much stiffer penalty because of the more serious nature of the assault. She was bailed to appear again on July 16 for sentencing.

More than 200,000 women from the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand work as live-in domestic helpers for Hong Kong families, earning a government-set minimum wage of around 450 US dollars a month.

In May, a 32-year-old housewife was jailed for seven months for branding her Indonesian maid's arm with a hot iron after she allowed her 8-month-old son to get too close to the iron in his baby walker.