She just doesn’t get it.
But, she will have 11 years to think it over.
Varsha Mahender Sabhnani told the court yesterday, “I was brought to this earth to help people who are in need.”
…This is the same woman who would beat her Indonesian slaves if she saw them stealing food from the trash.
Varsha Mahender Sabhnani of Muttontown, N.Y., is led out of Nassau County police headquarters in Mineola, N.Y., in this May 15, 2007 photo after her arrest on charges of enslaving two Indonesian women she and her husband brought to their mansion to work as housekeepers. Sabhnani, 45, and her husband, Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, were each convicted Monday, Dec. 17, 2007 of all charges in a 12-count federal indictment that included forced labor, conspiracy, involuntary servitude, and harboring aliens. (AP)
Varsha Mahender Sabhnani was sentenced to 11 years in prison for horboring and abusing 2 Indonesian women she kept as slaves at her New York home.
The BBC reported:
A wealthy New York woman has been sentenced to 11 years in jail for keeping two Indonesian women as slaves.
Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, 46, and her husband Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, kept them as slaves and abused them physically and psychologically.
The couple had been found guilty on 12 charges in December, including involuntary servitude, harbouring aliens and forced labour.
Mr Sabhnani is to be sentenced later on Friday and may get a shorter term.
In addition to prison, his Indian-born wife was fined $25,000 (£12,600).
“I just want to say that I love my children very much,” she told the federal court in Central Islip, on New York state’s Long Island, as two of her grown children looked on.
“I was brought to this earth to help people who are in need.”
Samirah was slashed and beaten by her slave owners. (USA Today)
The slaves were beaten with brooms and umbrellas if they were caught stealing food from the trash or sleeping late.
USA Today reported:
The women, known only as Samirah (pictured) and Enung, were subjected to “punishment that escalated into a cruel form of torture” that ended when one of the women fled on Mother’s Day.
Allegations of abuse included beatings with brooms and umbrellas, slashings with knives, being made to repeatedly climb stairs and take freezing cold showers as punishment for misdeeds that included sleeping late or stealing food from trash bins because they were poorly fed.
Previously:
New York Couple Convicted in Slavery & Torture Case
UPDATE: Grand Old Partisan sends this on the slavery laws in the United States:
The 13th Amendment, written and passed by the Republican Party, outlawed slavery in 1865. Even so, some Democrats persisted in forcing African-Americans to work in conditions so horrible they were akin to slavery. To prevent these Democrats from enslaving African-Americans, Senator Henry Wilson (R-MA) introduced the Peonage Abolion Act in January 1867. The Republican-controlled 39th Congress passed the law on March 2, 1867.
This law is still on the books, as part of the U.S. Criminal Code.
