A millionaire New York woman who afflicted years of abuse on two Indonesian house cleaners held as slaves in her Long Island home was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Thursday.

The woman, Varsha Sabhnani, 46, was convicted with her husband, Mahender Sabhnani, in December of involuntary servitude and other charges. The husband, 51, was convicted of forced labor, conspiracy, compulsory servitude and housing aliens like his wife, and will be sentenced Friday. He is out on bail but appeared in court at his wife’s sentencing.

Judge Arthur D. Spatt of Federal District Court also ruled Indian-born Varsha Sabhnani to serve probation for a three-year period and pay $25,000 in fines for exploiting the women, identified only as Samirah and Enung, from 2002 to 2007.

The judge adjourned ruling on a solicitation by the maids' lawyers of payment of $1.1 in back wages to the victims, who were not paid their salaries.

In their depositions, the victims stated that they were beaten with brooms and umbrellas, cut with knives and forced to climb stairs and take freezing showers as punishment by the millionaire couple, Muttontown residing.

Judge Spatt called the testimony “eye-opening, to say the least — that things like that go on in our country.”

“I just want to say that I love my children very much,” Ms. Sabhnani told the court as two of her grown children were present in the hall.

Before the sentence came, the defense attorneys had argued in a court brief the Sabhnani couple should receive mercy because of their charity and kindness to others.

Moreover, defense attorneys argued that many of her strange actions - including torturing the women - were partially the consequence of a metabolic unbalance generated by a starvation diet. Sabhnani dropped from 300 pounds to 130 pounds in a few years, the sources said. She also had four or five painful operations to remove vast flaps of skin that resulted from the sudden weight loss. In clear reference to the psychiatrist's report, federal prosecutor Mark Lesko wrote in court papers that the argument does not explain or excuse Varsha Sabhnani's behaviour for several years until the women escaped in 2007.