In the house in the Winterthur region, the same thing happened every day for ten months: The couple let the young woman out of the cage and instructed her to clean the house. At 3 p.m. the “slave” had to go back into the cage to learn hotel management material.
Afterwards, she had to cook for the couple and was locked in the cage again. When the man was not in the house, she was locked in by the wife, who was also accused.
At some point, the young woman put the shackles on herself and closed the cage door herself. She was told that the cage and the shackles were “a requirement of the hotel management school.” This was the only way she could get her degree and visa.
She had doubts and kept asking the couple why she was being locked in a cage. “This is not school.” She also had the feeling that the wife was under the influence of her husband. “I had the feeling that she felt guilty when she tied me up.”
«I should have noticed»
The wife, who was also accused, had previously stated that the man had manipulated her. She really thought that this was part of the training of employees. “Everyone thinks I should have noticed and that I’m stupid,” she said, crying. However, she was new to Switzerland at the time.
She was not only financially dependent on him, but also mentally. “I trusted my husband.” The public prosecutor’s office is demanding a suspended prison sentence of 10 months and a five-year ban from the country for the Filipina for multiple counts of aiding and abetting deprivation of liberty.
“I took advantage of their naivety”
The 46-year-old husband, who wanted to live out his strong tendency towards dominance with the two “house slaves” he hired one after the other, previously admitted that he had manipulated his wife. “I took advantage of her naivety.” She was not part of the “setting.” “When the first one arrived, she was surprised.”
He criticized the fact that his “setting” in court sounded as if he had set up a “Nazi regime.” That was a gross exaggeration. “The two women simply spent time in the cage, with an emergency key and the opportunity to get out at any time.” The cleaning instructions were also more of a guideline.
Pronounced dominant tendency
The Swiss man, who had a pronounced dominant tendency and a narcissistic disorder, recruited two young foreign women under false pretenses and exploited them as “house slaves”. He locked them in a cage every day and tied up one of them. He is accused of human trafficking and deprivation of liberty, among other things.
The trial against him will be conducted in an abbreviated procedure. If the court adopts the prosecutor’s proposal as the verdict, the man will receive a partially suspended prison sentence of 36 months, but will only have to serve nine months. He has already served five months of this in custody. He would therefore still have four months to go.
