Slave was paid $3.39 a day and locked up for 8 years

A couple who paid a woman just $3.39 a day, beat her and kept her locked up have been freed on bail, while a judge said the time had come to publicly name them.

The Supreme Court jury found the couple guilty.

A judge has granted bail to a husband and wife convicted of enslaving a grandmother for eight years.

The identity of the couple can now be revealed after Justice John Champion lifted a suppression order keeping their names secret.

Justice Champion said “the time has come” to name Kumuthini and Kandasamy Kannan publicly.

Justice Champion extended the couple’s bail ahead of a June plea hearing, saying he had been placed in an “impossible position”.

Defence lawyers had argued Mr and Mrs Kannan’s three teenage children had no one else to look after them if their parents didn’t return home on Friday night.

Justice Champion asked why the couple had not made preparations before today.

“It’s pretty reprehensible they didn’t think about the needs of their children” before coming to court to learn their fate, his honour said.

The couple face 25 years prison for possessing and using a slave between 2007 and 2015.

Justice Champion ordered strict bail conditions for the couple, saying “Mr and Mrs Kannan are effectively locked down”.

Kumuthini Kannan outside court. Picture: David Crosling

The Mt Waverley couple were found guilty of harbouring an elderly woman as a secret slave in their home for more than eight years.

The pair had been accused of locking the victim in their home for up to a month at a time while holidaying overseas and told the woman’s family to “get f---ed” when they asked for their mother to be allowed to return home to India.

The horrific ordeal was only brought to an end when paramedics found the Tamil grandmother lying in a pool of her urine, emaciated, with no teeth and too scared to speak to police.

After just over a day of deliberation, a jury found the couple guilty of knowingly possessing a slave between 2007 and 2015.

The woman accused of enslaving a grandmother in her home for eight years sobbed as the jury found her guilty.

Mrs Kannan was seen smiling just moments before the verdict was delivered.

The Mt Waverley woman covered her mouth in shock and clutched her husband’s arm as the jury found him guilty on the same charges – possessing and using a slave.

The woman bent over and began sobbing as the jury filed out of the courtroom after less than two days of deliberation.

The husband and wife each face a maximum of 25 years behind bars.

During a 10-week trial, the Supreme Court of Victoria heard the woman was beaten with a frozen chicken, had boiling water poured over her legs and was only allowed to shower once a week.

The woman said her female slave master was the main perpetrator of the abuse, but said Mr Kannan was present during the assaults and did nothing to stop them.

The traumatised slave, now in her 60s, was an illiterate widow when she was arrived in Australia in 2007 to work for the couple as a live in cleaner, nanny and cook.

She was paid just $3.39 per day — less than the price of a coffee — to be at the couple’s “beck and call” 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year.

Kandasamy Kannan outside court. Picture: David Geraghty

Crown prosecutor Richard Maidment QC said the couple had “almost total control over every basic human right and freedom” of the woman.

Mr Maidment said while the abuse were not indicative of slavery, it “bespeaks of a gross lack of respect, a gross lack of care”.

He told the jury the couple’s motivation for keeping the woman — an illegal non-citizen — in their home for eight years was “crystal clear”.

“They wanted essentially to import a true, tried and tested child carer and domestic servant, knowing that they could pay her next to nothing,” Mr Maidment said.

They did so, so they could continue to live in their five-bedroom home and maintain their lifestyle, which included yearly overseas holidays, Mr Maidment said.

In July 2015 the woman became seriously ill and collapsed on the bathroom floor of the Mt Waverley home where she lay for more than three hours while Mrs Kannan was at a piano concert.

She was admitted to Box Hill Hospital’s intensive care unit under a false name, where she stayed for more than two months.

Detailing her shocking ordeal in a series of police interviews stretching almost 31 hours, the woman said she had come to Australia to work for the couple in order to provide for her family in India.

Defence lawyers had argued the woman made up the “colourful” lies out of fear of persecution for overstaying her visa.

The pair will be sentenced at a later date.