While a student, Ángela Freitas was tortured by the Indonesian Army during the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. In 1988, she worked for the Institute of Human Rights within Indonesia, moving on to work for Amnesty International in 1989 as secretary of human rights. In the 1990s she fled to Australia, where she studied at the University of Queensland. Graduating with qualifications in political science and medicine, she started work at a hospital in Brisbane. This included a secondment into the Royal Australian Navy, where she worked on board a patrol vessel which intercepted refugee boats.