Man who punched infant daughter's face, pregnant girlfriend's belly jailed 8 months
An odd-job labourer, who has mild intellectual disability, pleaded guilty to assault and other offences after beating up his own baby daughter and his pregnant girlfriend at home.
SINGAPORE — An odd-job labourer was sentenced to eight months’ jail on Monday (March 25) for punching his pregnant girlfriend’s abdomen and the face of his infant daughter from a previous relationship.
The 37-year-old had pleaded guilty in court last month to two counts of assault as well as one count each of wrongful confinement and ill-treating a child.
Two charges of voluntarily causing hurt, one charge of intentionally causing harassment, alarm or distress, and another charge for committing mischief were taken into consideration for the sentencing.
The man cannot be named to protect the identities of his 32-year-old girlfriend and three-year-old daughter.
The court heard earlier that the man had punched his girlfriend’s face on June 12, 2017. The reason for this was not specified in court documents.
The next day, the girlfriend’s daughter, then 14, confronted the man for beating her mother, and told her mother to abort the baby since the man was unable to take care of her and was violent.
Angered by her remarks, the man punched his girlfriend in the abdomen. She was then six months’ pregnant with his child.
He then scratched the wrist of the girlfriend’s daughter and pulled her hair when she tried to intervene.
The teen then asked the man if he would like it if someone hit his biological child. In response, he went up to his own daughter, then a year old and whom he fathered with his former girlfriend, and punched her on the face and pulled her hair, causing her to cry.
The man’s girlfriend, her teenage daughter, and his infant daughter did not seek any medical consultation for their injuries.
In March last year, the man again became violent after he suspected her of cheating on him with her ex-boyfriend.
Telling her he was calling off the relationship, he locked the gate to their home to stop her from leaving and prevented her from calling the police by damaging her mobile phone.
He then pushed her on the bed in the room and tried to strangle her. He also punched her face, pulled her hair and kicked her chest after she managed to free herself.
The girlfriend made a police report four days later.
A report from the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) last April stated that the man was suffering from anger management issues and other conditions, including depression with psychosis. Another IMH report from November last year said that the man’s long-standing anger control problem — linked to his mild intellectual disability and negative experiences of his early childhood and early adult life — contributed to his aggressive behaviour.
The man, who was unrepresented, asked the judge to grant him probation rather than impose a jail term. He said that he had been seeking treatment for his anger issues at IMH and his condition had improved.
District Judge May Mesenas said that as some harm had been done to the victims, the man would have to bear the consequences to ensure that such incidents did not happen in the future.
