Maid jailed for throwing 5-year-old boy on the ground twice

SINGAPORE — A maid who threw a five-year-old child on the ground twice, causing him to feel tenderness over his spine, was jailed for eight months on Tuesday (Aug 20).

The 24-year-old foreign domestic worker from Indonesia, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the victim, pleaded guilty to one charge of ill-treating the child, under the Children and Young Persons Act.

The boy's mother made a police report after seeing a video on Facebook taken by a woman who happened to see the incident.

The witness posted the clip on a WeChat group, which included a "Singaporean mum community", said Deputy Public Prosecutor Ang Siok Chen.

The video went viral and was shared on Facebook, where the victim's mother saw it. She recognised her son and the helper, and made a police report.

The court heard that the domestic helper had gone after the boy when he went towards a field in Punggol with a ball on the morning of March 12 this year.

While at the field, the helper picked the boy up, but he struggled. She retaliated by smacking his buttocks, so that he would not struggle and fall off.

However, he continued to struggle and she grew frustrated, the court heard.

She deliberately threw him onto the ground and picked him up again, before repeating this a second time.

After that, she carried the boy back home.

BOY TOLD MOTHER ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED

When he got home, he told his mother that the helper had thrown him to the ground, and that he felt pain in his chest.

The helper denied this and claimed that the victim had rolled on the grass, and the mother did not pursue the matter further.

However, the incident had been witnessed by a 32-year-old Chinese national, who took a video of it on her phone.

She then posted the video on a WeChat group, and it was shared on Facebook and citizen journalism site Stomp. The boy's mother saw the video on Facebook two days after the incident and recognised her son and the helper.

She made a police report, saying that she had just found out from a video that her child was abused by her domestic helper.

When the boy was taken to hospital on March 15, a doctor found mild tenderness over his spine and chest area.

The prosecutor played the footage in court on Tuesday and asked for eight to 10 months' jail, saying the maid had wilfully inflicted injuries on the boy not once, but twice.

The helper, who was not represented by a lwyer, told the judge tearfully through an interpreter that she would like to apologise to her employer for what she had done and asked for a lighter sentence.

She could have been jailed up to four years, fined a maximum of S$4,000, or both, for ill-treating a child in her care. CNA

For more stories like this, visit cna.asia.