A pregnant woman was sentenced to eight weeks of imprisonment on Wednesday (5 May) on two counts of voluntarily causing hurt to a domestic helper, according to CNA.
Tan Hui Mei, 35, first employed the unnamed victim, a 24-year-old Indonesian woman, in November 2018 for household chores, cooking, and caretaking for her youngest daughter, who had been a toddler at the time, for $600 a month.
At that time, Tan, who was working as an administrator, was living with her husband, her mother, and her three daughters.
Somewhere between then and March 2019, Tan somehow decided that being abused should be one of the poor helper’s duties. She forced her helper to ingest a piece of dirty cotton wool on the dining table, watching as the latter was forced to comply.
Why would someone do that? It gets people sick, and is just sick. Imagine the humiliation she must have felt.
But that was just the start. Tan also watched as the maid was forced (by her) to eat hair on the toilet floor, and slapped her simply for being “unhappy with her work performance”. Though the helper called the police to report the latter, she continued to work for Tan.
Two more instances of physical assault occurred, one on 30 March 2019, when the helper did not attend to Tan’s toddler while Tan was sleeping in her room. The helper thought that Tan herself or her other daughter, who was with her, would check on the toddler when she started crying.
Guess not, because Tan aggressively questioned the helper about not taking care of the toddler. Tan then slapped both sides of her face and hit her forehead thrice, which resulted in swelling. The helper did not fight back and merely resumed working on her household chores.
Come on, it’s your own child. Just go and check in on her yourself.
Tan also pinched the helper after she fell asleep while trying to comply with a demand to massage her employer’s legs. (Are massages even part of a helper’s work scope?)
The police were eventually informed when the helper’s sister contacted the Centre for Domestic Employees (CDE). The helper was taken from Tan’s home and brought to the hospital with several bruises.
Tan initially refuted accusations against her, and her lawyer cited that she had been employing domestic helpers for more than a decade without similar problems.
However, she later pled guilty, and directly addressed the judge in a speech admitting culpability and pleading for leniency.
“I just want you to know, I know I am wrong,” she is reported as saying, “And my family needs me, and I also don’t wish to give birth in prison and be separate from my children.”
Well, maybe she shouldn’t have abused her helper in the first place.
The judge noted that there are no extraordinary circumstances that justify a deviation from the norm of imprisonment that is given to abusers of domestic helpers.
Tan was accordingly sentenced, and was further ordered to compensate the victim with wages totalling $3,200 for her loss of employment after leaving the abusive household. If not, she would have to serve 16 days in jail in default.
Feature Image: Doidam 10 / Shutterstock.com
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