Mother lodged report thinking 3-year-old daughter got bruises from pre-school, but maid was behind pinches

SINGAPORE: After noticing recurring bruises on her three-year-old daughter, a woman lodged a police report thinking the pre-school was responsible.

However, the perpetrator turned out to be the family's maid, who became nervous after hearing about the police report and aroused her employer's suspicions.

The 39-year-old domestic helper, who cannot be named due to gag orders protecting the victim's identity, pleaded guilty on Thursday (Dec 15) to two counts of ill-treating a child in her care.

Another four charges will be considered in sentencing.

The court heard that the accused, who is from India, began working for the victim's family in July 2020 as a domestic helper.

She was entrusted with the care of the victim and her one-year-old brother.

In mid-2021, the victim's mother began noticing bruises on her daughter. She later asked the maid about it, but the maid said she did not know how the girl got the bruises.

Thinking that the child had sustained the bruises from playing, the mother did not pursue the matter until January 2022, when she saw a bruise on her daughter's back.

Given the location of the bruise, the woman suspected that her daughter had been abused. She again confronted the maid, who denied any wrongdoing.

The mother of the victim then suspected that the abuse had occurred at her daughter's pre-school and lodged a police report.

However, the pre-school checked their closed-circuit television recordings and found nothing amiss. 

The victim's mother meanwhile noticed that the maid appeared nervous after the police report was filed. The mother grew suspicious and checked the CCTV recordings in her home.

Some of the recordings were not available as the video overwrote automatically due to storage limits.

Video clips played in court showed the accused repeatedly pinching the three-year-old girl, who was lying down either trying to sleep or drinking milk.

At times, the girl would cry out and scream in pain afterwards, and the accused would soothe her by rubbing the area she had just pinched.

The maid pinched the girl's chest, bicep, stomach and back. She also slapped the girl's forehead, mouth, face and arm. At times, the girl would wake up from her sleep and cry in reaction to being pinched. 

On at least one occasion, the girl's screams woke up her little brother, who was sleeping in the same room.

The victim's mother confronted the maid with snippets of the recordings. In an interview with the police, the maid admitted slapping the victim's forehead and pinching or twisting her cheeks.

She claimed that she did not remember when she did it. She also said she committed the acts because she was agitated, annoyed and tired of working. 

However, she did not raise any complaints regarding working for the victim's family.

The victim was taken to hospital with injuries including bruises on both cheeks and a bruise on her back. Multiple circular old bruises were found over the girl's body and limbs, but the cause of the bruises cannot be ascertained.

After discovering the offences, the victim's mother quit her job to look after her children and her husband became the sole breadwinner.

PROSECUTION CALLS FOR JAIL

The prosecution called for at least 22 months' jail, saying cases of ill-treatment of children like these are difficult to detect.

In this case, it concerns a young child who cannot speak or report the offences. As she was only three, she was also unable to comprehend the wrongfulness of the maid's actions, said the prosecutor.

"All she could do was cry when the acts were particularly painful. She even turned to the accused for comfort when it was the accused who inflicted this pain on the victim," she said.

While there is no excuse for all kinds of abuse against children, the prosecutor said the victim in this case was merely trying to sleep or drink her milk when the accused ill-treated her.

She said the maid treated the victim like a punching bag to vent whatever emotions she was feeling at the time.

The maid's lawyer asked for not more than six to 10 months' jail. She said her client had come to Singapore for a better life.

She said her husband left her client and her children, and her client was ostracised by her family, as they did not support her marriage.

She worked at a temple and raised her two children single-handedly, said the defence.

When she was working in Singapore as a maid, her mother cared for her children back home. However, her mother contracted COVID-19 and her health deteriorated after that, incurring medical bills that she had to foot.

She felt very distressed and was shown in CCTV footage played in court to be constantly on her phone. She was in touch with her family and was financially troubled and stressed, said the defence.

The defence said the accused was not a bad-natured, evil or malicious person and this is her first brush with the law.

The judge adjourned sentencing to January.