SINGAPORE: A former preschool teacher was jailed for 17 months and two weeks on Thursday (March 13) after she pleaded guilty to three counts of ill-treating a child.
Thirty-five-year-old Min Lin, who taught Mandarin at a Kinderland preschool, entered a guilty plea on March 5. Three similar charges were taken into consideration.
The four ill-treated children are one to three years old. Two of the children were forced to drink water.
Lin’s case first caught the attention of the public nearly two years ago after she was accused of ill-treating a 23-month-old girl on the afternoon of June 30, 2023, at Kinderland Preschool at Woodlands Mart. The former teacher forced the little girl onto the floor and poured water into her mouth, which caused the child to choke and sputter.
Another teacher caught the incident on camera and the footage of the ill-treatment was shared online.
Earlier that month, Lin tried to force a two-year-old boy to drink water not just once but twice. The parents of both the girl and boy later said the children had nightmares following the ill-treatment.
While District Judge John Ng accepted the premise that Lin had not acted with malice, a report in CNA quotes him as saying that she “displayed a clear disregard to the negative impact of her acts of improper treatment in her attempts to make sure the children drink water”.
He also rejected a claim from the defence that Lin had acted for the toddlers’ well-being and had merely been overzealous.
The judge also noted that the toddlers and their parents, as well as the other children present during the incidents, had sustained psychological harm.
After the videos were made public and the former teacher was charged, Lin was remanded at the Institute of Mental Health for two weeks in 2023.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Jotham Tay sought a jail term of 18 to 24 months for Lin, saying that there had been “obvious element of cruelty” in how she had treated the children.
He said, “The children were in distress and yet she persisted in her acts, including one that was so extreme that she poured water down the child’s throat as she was crying on the floor”.
However, her lawyer, Kalidass Murugaiyan, argued that Lin had acted out of concern that the children would get dehydrated. For the offence of ill-treating a child, Lin could have been jailed for as long as eight years, fined $8,000, or both./TISG