A 30-year-old Indonesian foreign domestic worker was sentenced to six months and seven weeks in jail on Monday (13 Jan) after she robbed her employer of thousands of dollars. She also served her employer’s family food mixed with some of her urine, saliva and menstrual blood.
The court heard that the helper began working for a family of six in 2017. She noticed that her elderly employer, who received a monthly allowance of S$3,300 from her husband and three daughters, would keep the money in a safe inside her bedroom.
The helper, Diana, observed her employer keying in a passcode to unlock her iPad and tried to unlock the safe with the same code.
She was successful and went on to steal S$13,300 from her employer’s safe on five occasions, between August 2017 and June 2018. Diana enlisted the help of another woman to help her transfer the stolen cash to her home in Indonesia.
Diana also mixed her own bodily fluids into food she served to her employer’s family in the hope that they would somehow agree with her and not scold her for her work performance.
In August 2019, she mixed her urine, saliva and menstrual blood into a kettle of water which the family drank. She also mixed her urine, saliva and menstrual blood into rice she had cooked that was also consumed by the family.
The helper’s activities only came to light in October last year when she confessed to her actions. The family promptly made a police report and Diana pleaded guilty to two counts of mischief and one count of theft in court.
Diana apologised to her employers “from the bottom of my heart” in court and said that she had not committed any crime in Indonesia.
Revealing that she is a divorcee and that she stole the money as her family in Indonesia was “in some distress,” she told the court: “I only have one child and my mother is ill and aged. I am the breadwinner. I am staying in remand for two months and I cannot work.”
The helper could have faced a maximum of seven years in jail and a fine for the charge of theft in a dwelling and could have been jailed for a maximum of one year and fined for each charge of mischief.