Australia: Young men starved and beaten, court told

Link here. Excerpt:

'A couple held two young boarders in their central NSW home, bashing and starving them and forcing them to do chores, a jury has been told.

The man and woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, have pleaded not guilty to unlawfully detaining the two young men with intent to obtain advantage and occasioning actual bodily harm.

In his opening address at the Downing Centre District Court in Sydney on Thursday, crown prosecutor John Bowers told the jury the two men - who also cannot be named - were boarders in the home of the couple in central western NSW on two separate occasions between mid-2007 and August 2010.

He said the woman, aged 48, and her male de facto partner, 43, detained and psychologically controlled the men through a "regime of physical and mental abuse over an extended period".'