Singapore — A domestic helper who treated the 76-year-old mother of her employer cruelly pleaded guilty to three out of four counts of voluntarily causing hurt to a vulnerable victim received a 30-week jail sentence on Monday (Dec 6).
Upset upon receiving a scolding, 40-year-old Aye Aye Naing, a citizen of Myanmar, roughly pulled the hair or arms of the elderly woman to make her sit up, slapped her on the mouth, or pulled her by the neck from her wheelchair.
The bedridden older woman, who has arthritis and problems with her spine, was unable to defend herself, save for raising her hand slowly.
The maltreatment lasted between six and seven months, and would occur after Naing’s 52-year-old employer would berate her when she did not do things correctly.
This would cause the helper to get stressed and frustrated, and then vent her feelings on the older woman.
“The accused became stressed and frustrated with her employer scolding her for not doing things in a proper manner. Accordingly, she vented her anger on the victim,” Deputy Public Prosecutor Selene Yap told the court.
The prosecution told the court that Naing was normally treated well by her employer, according to a report in Yahoo! News Singapore.
After some incidents of being maltreated, the elderly woman told her daughter. The employer then confronted Naing, who said the older lady merely fell.
After this, the employer had a CCTV camera installed in her mother’s room.
She later found four incidents of elderly abuse when she checked footage from the camera after August 2020.
During the first incident, the employer’s mother was lying in bed. Naing approached her and hit her face with a pillow. When the elderly woman tried to protect her face, the helper moved the woman’s arm away. She then proceeded to hit the woman on the nose and face several times.
In the second incident, Naing shook an alarm clock in front of the older woman’s face and then hit her on the mouth with it.
As for the third incident, the helper pushed the woman in her wheelchair into her bedroom, settled her on the bed, and pushed her until she lay down. She again hit the victim on the mouth and pressed it hard.
Sometime on the same day, she pulled the woman by the hair and then pushed her until she sat up. Less than half an hour later, when the victim was back in bed, the helper pushed the bottom of a water bottle against the woman’s mouth three times.
After discovering these offences, the employer filed a police report against Naing. She also brought her mother to the hospital, where she was found to have bruises on her forehead, right cheek, left shoulder region and left thigh.
Doctors referred the older woman to a polyclinic for a review of her condition.
Upon an order from the court, the helper was brought to the Institute of Mental Health, where she was diagnosed to have an adjustment disorder.
Naing’s abuse of the victim was called “episodes of outburst” of frustration by Naing’s lawyer, Mr Joseph Lum Guo Ron. He said the maltreatment had not been frequent and asked for a jail sentence of six months for his client.
He added that she has a good relationship with the elderly woman, who was like a grandmother to her. The number of chores she had to do caused her to lose her temper when the older woman called her, he added.
Naing could have ended up in jail for as long as three years, been made to pay a fine of $5,000, or both, for voluntarily causing hurt. In cases of voluntarily causing hurt to a vulnerable person, the penalties could have been doubled. /TISG
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