Employer Lili Huang has been arrested.
AB Wire
In one of the most shocking cases to come to light of modern-day slavery and brutality involving house help, a rich Chinese-origin woman, Lili Huang, 35, has been arrested after her Chinese nanny escaped from a house of horrors and narrated her ordeal to the police, in Woodbury, Minnesota.
The 58-year-old woman, who worked as a nanny, and spoke only Chinese, was spotted by the police after she ran away from her employer, afraid of being killed.
The woman, who has not been identified, told police that she had been beaten, starved and threatened with death by her employer, for whom she worked as a nanny, reported The Washington Post.
The nanny had also been forced to walk on all fours for hours “like a dog” and fed her own hair, she said. When police took the nanny to the hospital, they discovered she had multiple broken ribs and a broken sternum, authorities said.
On Friday, the nanny’s employer, Lili Huang, appeared in court to face charges including human trafficking, false imprisonment and assault.
Washington County Attorney Pete Orput likened the nanny’s treatment to “slavery or indentured servitude.”
“She was held in pretty appalling conditions,” he told the Twin Cities Pioneer Press.
The allegation has stunned Woodbury, a quiet and upscale suburb of St. Paul. The city is home to some of the country’s wealthiest families, the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reported in 2015. Earlier this year, Woodbury was named a finalist for the National Civic League’s All-America City Award, given to 10 communities across the nation that “engage residents in innovative, inclusive and effective efforts to tackle critical challenges.”
According to authorities, hidden behind the white columns and red brick of Lili Huang’s $539,000 house on Wellington Lane was the most heinous of abuse. The nanny, who has not been named, began working for the wealthy Huang family in Shanghai, where she took care of Huang’s minor daughter, according to a criminal complaint obtained by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The Huangs treated her well in China, the nanny told authorities, so she agreed work for them in the United States, reported the Post.
Shortly after arriving in Minnesota in March, however, the nanny realized that her situation had radically shifted.
She had been promised $890 a month but now found herself working up to 18 hours a day cooking, cleaning and taking care of the Huangs’ child, according to the complaint. Her salary only came out to about $1.80 an hour, authorities later calculated, but she said she never even received that amount.
Instead of a fair wage, she received frequent beatings, she told police. “During the time in the home she was physically assaulted by defendant, often times in front of the children,” Orput, the county prosecutor, said in a statement. “When this occurred she told defendant she wanted to return to China. Defendant acquired the victim’s passport and kept it and told the woman she was ‘not going anywhere.’”
The nanny was also starved by the family, she told police. She was fed nothing but “scraps” and crackers, causing her to drop from 120 pounds to just 88 pounds in barely four months, according to authorities.
On July 4, as Woodbury residents relaxed on blankets and lawn chairs outside the city’s sports center to watch fireworks, the nanny was allegedly being assaulted by Huang. Huang grabbed the woman’s hair and bashed her head into a table and other objects, the nanny told police. She was also punched and kicked in her rib cage, according to the complaint.
Less than a week later, Huang again attacked the nanny, according to the complaint. On July 10, the nanny was so badly beaten that “she could not get up off her hands and knees,” according to prosecutors, reported the Post.
She was forced to walk around the house on her hands and knees “like a dog for four hours,” the Woodbury Bulletin reported, citing the complaint.
The alleged abuse came to a head on July 13.
When the nanny accidentally spilled food on the counter, “the defendant came after the woman with a knife threatening to kill her,” according to the county prosecutor’s statement.
When Huang’s father allegedly stopped the attack, the nanny finally fled the home. The nanny told police that Huang had ripped the hair from her head. The nanny then hid the hair, according to the complaint, so that Huang wouldn’t find it “and force her to eat it.”
Huang appeared in court on Friday to face five felony charges, according to prosecutors: labor trafficking, seizing a passport with intent to violate labor trafficking, false imprisonment, assault with a dangerous weapon and assault causing substantial bodily harm. She remains jailed in lieu of $350,000 bail, according to the Star Tribune.