Singapore—A 40-year-old woman was given a prison sentence of seven months after she had injured an 18-year-old woman whom she suspected of having an affair with her husband.
On Thursday, November 28, Chen Xiaqin was convicted of voluntarily causing hurt with a dangerous weapon, according to a report from Channel NewsAsia (CNA).
Ms Chen had been celebrating her birthday with her husband, the head of a production company named ApertureXXI, and some of the people who work for him, on May 10, 2018, in Geylang, at the Hook On Steamboat restaurant, when the couple got into a fight.
While the husband walked away to end the fight, Ms Chen remained at the restaurant and continue to drink several bottles of beer.
By 7:30 in the evening, Ms Chen went over to the teenager, Ng Jia Hui, who is an employee at her husband’s company. According to Selene Yap, the Deputy Public Prosecutor on the case, Ms Chen then pulled the teenager’s hair two times, and then hit the teen on the back of her head using a beer bottle.
The women then got into a scuffle.
Ms Chen’s assault on Ms Ng, and the enusing fight between the two women, was caught on CCTV.
Ms Chen took a shard from the beer bottle she had used to hit the teen, but the younger woman used her forearm to protect herself, and by doing so, received a cut on her arm.
The other employees from Ms Chen’s husband’s company stepped in and separated the two women, and one employee called the police, telling them that a person had been assaulted and was bleeding.
The court heard that the teen was treated at the hospital due to a five centimeter laceration on her forearm and a three centimenter laceration on her scalp, and still has scars to this day.
According to Dhanwant Singh, Ms Chen’s lawyer, his client acted out of “fear and anger” in tandem with her depression and adjustment disorder. This was, he said, uncharacteristic of her.
“The assault was a spur-of-the-moment reaction caused by her husband’s suspicious conduct and an abrupt disappearance from the scene, but not before making sign language of endearment to the very female he is alleged to have an affair with,” Mr Dharwant said.
He added that Ms Chen acted in the way she did “to prevent her husband from being ‘stolen’”.
Yahoo reports the lawyer saying in mitigation, “(The) scarring inflicted on a lady is the thought of her hubby favouring the company of another female and even more bitterly will it be to our client; whose world brings to mind the saying, ‘to you he is a dog but to the dog you are everything’, such was the lifeblood of our client’s existence in Singapore, and when that artery of supply was threatened to be shattered she collapsed.”
The maximum penalty his client could have received is seven years in jail and a fine, or a combination of both. /-TISG
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