‘I felt like a prisoner’: the domestic workers ‘trapped’ by Canberra’s diplomatic employers

One staff member was paid as little as 65 cents an hour and worked a seven-day week with no respite. Advocates say it’s modern slavery

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Priyanka Danaratna was invisible in Australia.

Behind the closed doors of a house in Canberra’s leafy diplomatic quarter, she toiled as a domestic servant. She spoke no English, had her passport seized and could not leave the house without permission.

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‘I felt like a prisoner’: the domestic workers ‘trapped’ by Canberra’s diplomatic employers

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