Additional articles on maid abuse

Other cases of maid abuse in Singapore:

Doting dad, filial son, Guilty of molesting maid
ST, 05/04/07
Crystal Chan

A filial son. A doting father. But Louis Ng Cheng Kiat, 39, has also been found guilty of molesting his maid. In court, the purchasing officer painted himself as a paragon of virtue whenpleading for leniency, saying he paid for his mum’s cancer treatments and thathe was close to his two sons. He even suggested that his Indonesian maid had made up the incident because shewas unhappy working for the family.

However, the court found Ng guilty of molest and sentenced him to seven months’ jail. He will also get three strokes of the cane.

The maid claimed that on 6 Jun 2005, she was sweeping the floor in Ng’s roomwhen he suddenly appeared behind her. Ng grabbed and pushed her onto the bed. Then he restrained her with his handsand legs when she struggled. He molested her while his two sons waited for their breakfast outside.

The maid managed to escape from Ng when she scratched his arm, causing him to release his grip. Later, Ng asked the maid for forgiveness. By then, she had locked herself inthe kitchen toilet for an hour.

When the maid was told to buy lunch for the family, she went out and called a fellow maid who, in turn, alerted the police. Ng was arrested that day.I t turned out that that was not the first time Ng had sexually abused the maid– she had been molested thrice between 16 and 23 Apr that year.

In his statement, Ng denied molesting the maid on 6 Jun and said she was trying to fix him.He claimed that he got into an argument with her when she flung his computer adaptor down in his room that day. And during the scuffle, he had to hold her waist to stop her from attacking him.

Ng also suggested that the maid may have been “taught by someone” to make false accusations. Ng claimed she was unhappy working for his family and did not get along with his mother-in-law. However, District Judge Jasvender Kaur found that while the maid was initially unhappy, it was only because she had too little work to do.

After the maid’s agent met Ng’s family on 11 Apr 2005, her workload was increased. They allowed her to run errands for Ng’s mother-in-law. The judge found that contrary to Ng’s claims, the maid became unhappy only after he molested her in April. The judge also rejected Ng’s statement that he accidentally touched the maid during the scuffle in his room. She noted that Ng did not tell his mother-in-law and his wife about the scuffle until the maid returned to the apartment with policemen.

She said: “One would expect a concerned father and husband to warn his familyabout the maid’s violent outburst, especially after his own ‘scary’experience.” In mitigation, Ng’s lawyer said he was a first offender and that the trial had caused his wife to have nightmares and insomnia.

Ng could have been jailed up to two years and caned. He is appealing against his sentence and conviction.

Woman charged with beating maid
ST, 18/04/07

A woman has been charged with four counts of slapping an Indonesian maid and whipping her with a belt in her flat last year.

Waheeda Akhtar Ali, 36, allegedly slapped Ms Dede Enis, 24, on her cheeks at her Flora Road, Upper Changi, home in June and July.

In one of the incidents, she is accused of causing the victim’s head to bump against a wardrobe. Another charge states that she used a belt to whip her maid twice on her backin June last year.

The case will be mentioned on May 15. If convicted, she faces a maximum penalty of 11/2 years in jail, a fine of $1,500 or both on each charge.

Waheeda’s lawyer, Mr Ong Peng Boon, said that he had just been briefed andwould be making representations.

Maid abuse
ST, 11/04/07
Elena Chong
Court Correspondent

A woman employer who abused her young Indonesian maid was sentenced to a total of 10 weeks’ jail yesterday. Housewife Jaya Gopal, 32, was convicted of slapping 19-year-old Kuseliningsih at her Whampoa Road home in September 2004.

She was also found guilty of hitting the maid on her face with a wooden ladle,hitting her on her back with a belt and on the head with a belt buckle between late October and early November that year. The second incident left her with a bleeding scalp.

Jaya, a former National Kidney Foundation employee, is out on $5,000 bail pending her appeal against conviction. Ten other charges have been stood down and a pre-trial conference will be held.

Ms Kuseliningsih, now 21, told District Judge Shobha G. Nair last month that her employer slapped her about a week into her job after she had alerted her about the children being naughty.

Then, before Deepavali, she was about to hang the laundry when Jaya saw dirt behind the washing machine and questioned her. Before she could respond, Jaya took a wooden ladle from the kitchen drawer and tried to hit her, but the maid held onto it in self-defence.

Jaya demanded that she release the wooden ladle and falsely assured her she would not be hit. When the maid let go, Jaya hit her on the face with it. She then told her son to get a belt which she used to hit the maid on her back and then used the belt buckle to hit her twice on her head.

The defence case was that the assaults did not take place and Ms Kuseliningsih made them up. Besides working for her employer, the maid also had to work at a foodstall run by Jaya’s brother and at the home of Jaya’s mother.It was not the victim who made a police report but Jaya’s relative by marriage, who did so on Nov 23 that year.

Woman accused of hurting maid with iron ST, 01/05/2007

A WOMAN said to have burned an Indonesian maid with an iron and punched her was yesterday charged with two counts of abuse.

Kiew Soek Inn, 59, is alleged to have used the iron on the back and right hand of Miss Sudaryanti, her daughter’s maid, at a flat in Balestier Road in early September 2005. Later that month, she is said to have punched the maid and pulled her hair.

If convicted of causing hurt with the iron, Kiew, who is represented by Ms Christine Sekhon, faces a jail term of up to five years and a fine. For the other charge of voluntarily causing hurt, the maximum penalty is a jail term of up to one year or a fine of up to $1,000 or both.
A pre-trial conference has been fixed for June 25. Kiew is out on $10,000 bail.

Big house, but...er, no cash to pay maid Cara Van Miriah
ST, date unknown

They live in a five-bedroom terrace house in Seletar Hills, drive an expensive car and appear to lead a comfortable lifestyle.

Yet, when they needed to cut down on household expenditure, they looked not to themselves, but to their domestic helper.

They told the maid that they would take away $50 from her monthly pay, which was originally $300. They even told her that the reason for the pay cut was because they did not have enough money to spend.

The 22-year-old Sri Lankan maid, who has a two-year-contract, said: “My pay was cut after eight months. My employer told me that they can’t afford to pay me. “She didn’t say if I will get the money back when my contract ends next June.”

The maid, who asked not to be named, said her employer has deducted $150 over the past three months. According to maid agencies and industry observers, there are quite a number of maids who, like her, are subjected to employers who are rich in cash and assets, but poor at heart.

Ms Bridget Lew, president of Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics(Home), said that some of these employers are high-flying professionals, such as doctors and lawyers.

She told The New Paper on Sunday: “There is no guarantee that if an employer is rich, he will pay the salary on time, provide enough food or look after a maid’s welfare.“The truth is, they are just as capable of mistreating their domestic workers as those who are poorer. In any class of society, bad behaviour sometimes prevails.”

In her four years of running Home, a shelter for abused maids, Ms Lew has come across several such cases. She recalled that there was an Indonesian maid who was ill-treated by her employers, who were doctors. Although they lived in a nice house, they made the maid sleep in a poorly-ventilated storeroom that was cluttered with boxes.

“The maid was also verbally-abused. After a few months, she asked for a transfer,” Ms Lew said. Agencies observed that despite being well-off, some employers can be stingy and selfish.

Mr Angland Seah, who owns AJS Manpower Consultants, said: “They stint on food,even restricting the food portions for the maid. They’re reluctant to buy rice or meat for their maid.”

Filipino maid Fern Sumillo, 27, said that she knows of one maid who is left starving daily because her employer is stingy with food. Ms Sumillo gave the example of an employer who lives in a five-bedroom house along Yio Chu Kang Road.

She said: “Every day, the Indonesian maid would ask some of us for food because she can’t eat until her employer has eaten at night.”And one employer, a doctor, even gave strict instructions to the maid not to cook more than one cup of rice for each meal. The rice was to be shared by four adults, including the maid.

A spokesman for Success Manpower Employment Agency said other employers have withheld maids’ salaries – and feigned ignorance when asked. One of the agency’s Myanmar maids worked on a landed property for four months without pay. She kept mum because she didn’t know how to broach the topic. When approached by the agency, the employer gave a nonchalant reply, and said,“She (the maid) didn’t tell me, so we didn’t know”.

Some well-heeled employers are known to stretch every dollar. Mr Seah of AJS Manpower Consultants recalled: “I had one maid who would shuttle between two houses because the employer felt she had nothing to do in the afternoon.“They justified the pay by giving her extra work elsewhere. I told them it was illegal.”

And instead of hiring two maids, some rely on one to clean a big house, cook and do laundry for a family of five, on top of washing four to five cars – all without any incentive and sufficient rest, agencies groused.

A Filipino maid from JRS Business Express, who worked at a two-storey house in Geylang, was overloaded with work daily. After completing her chores at the house, the former nurse had to look after an elderly family member of the household at a hospital. She would return home from the hospital in the morning to catch a few hours of sleep and then buy lunch with her own money.

Two months later, she fainted at the hospital, her agent said. The rich also have peculiar habits, imposing unreasonable house rules.

One Filipino maid from JRS Business Express agency was expected to use five different coloured cloths to clean different pieces of furniture in the house. It proved to be a confusing task for the newly-hired helper. As a result, she incurred the wrath of her boss, a tai-tai in her 40s. The woman also wanted the maid to iron the bath towels after family members showered. The maid quit one month later.

Expatriates, who are the preferred choice of employers as they are known for their generosity, can be slave-drivers too, Ms Lew said.She was referring to one incident where a Filipino maid was asked to help out with a home-catering business, which means she had to work from early in the morning till 3am. After a year, she ran away and was later referred to Home by the Philippine Embassy.

Ms Lew noted that despite their wealth and education, these well-off employers exhibit “third world behaviour”. Although help is available for those who feel they are short-changed by their employers, not many would dare to confront or report them. (See report onright).

As the Sri Lankan maid put it: “If I say anything, my employer may get angry. Imay lose my job.“If I complain and continue working, she may make my life difficult.”When asked if she would contact her agent or the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) about the pay cut, she said with apprehension: “I don’t know if it’s a good idea. It’s either lose $50, or make my boss angry and lose the whole $250 and my job.”