Woman accused of enslaving, beating and starving Chinese nanny

(Washington County Jail)

A woman in Minnesota has been accused of enslaving, beating and starving her nanny in a wealthy suburb outside St. Paul.

The unnamed 58-year-old nanny claims that Lili Huang, 35, beat and starved her for several months. Huang has since been charged with five felony counts related to human labor trafficking including false imprisonment and assault.

The nanny arrived in the US from Shanghai, China in late March, was forced to work 18 hours a day and did not receive any of her pay, which came to roughly $2 an hour, according to a press release by Washington County’s district attorney. The woman was found wandering the streets with two black eyes, broken ribs, broken sternum, officials said in the release.

According to the criminal complaint, Huang kept the victim’s passport and told her she wasn’t allowed to leave the country after she was physically assaulted and said she wanted to return home. The nanny also claims that she weighed 120 pounds when she arrived in the states and that she now weighs 88 pounds after she was only given scraps of food to eat.

On several occasions, according to the complaint, Huang prevented the nanny from leaving the house, threatened to kill her with a knife, and beat the nanny in front of her own children.

Agents with the US Department of Homeland Security found a bag of hair under the nanny’s mattress, which the nanny said Huang had ripped from her head. She claims she hid the hair so Huang wouldn’t force her to eat it.

“Human labor trafficking is a crime that no one can believe exists in their community,” Washington County prosecutor Pete Orput wrote in the release. “However, it is here, it is being committed by some of our citizens, and it amounts to nothing less than slavery in the 21st century. We are determined, as part of this office’s Major Prosecution unit, to attack this issue just as we have attacked sex trafficking of juveniles.”