Couple jailed for 7yrs for holding five Thai women as sex slaves

Sydney, Dec 18 (ANI): A couple in Australia, who held five Thai women as sex slaves in a Fairfield brothel, has been jailed for at least seven years.

Trevor McIvor, 63, and his Thai-born wife, Kanokporn Tanuchit, 42, forced the women to work at their brothel, Marilyns, seven days a week, to pay back a 45,000-dollar debt each was told was the price for a tourist visa.

The women, known by their working names Jasmine, Nicky, Yoko, Suzie and Sophie, were often abused and humiliated. They could not refuse clients, were put at risk of sexually transmitted infections and were forced to work when sick, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Their passports were confiscated, phone access was restricted and Tanuchit told them their families in Thailand would be harmed if they tried to escape.

They escaped after one of the women, Yoko, secretly contacted the Thai consul general in 2006. The police and immigration officials raided the premises the following day and found the women in an unlit locked room.

Judge, Johnathan Williams said the two "traded in human misery and poverty" and their punishment would serve as a warning to others in the "morally reprehensible" sex slave trade.

The pair, who has two young children, was the first people in NSW to be convicted under sexual servitude laws in 2008.he conviction was quashed on appeal, but in a retrial earlier this year they were found guilty of five counts of possessing a slave and five counts of using a slave.

In the District Court, the defendants were sentenced to a maximum 12 years jail, with a non-parole period of 7 and half years for McIvor and seven years for Tanuchit. (ANI)