Further arguments for sentencing needed for maid-abuse couple: Court
SINGAPORE — Prosecutors yesterday pressed for the maximum 12-month jail term to be imposed on the couple who starved their Filipino domestic helper until she weighed just 29kg.
However, District Judge Low Wee Ping adjourned his decision for lawyers from both sides to make further submissions, including for the prosecution to argue on how a compensation offer of S$10,000 from the accused would affect their sentences.
They will also have to convince him on why he should adopt a sentencing approach that was similar to those who have been charged for intentionally causing hurt, when Lim Choon Hong and Chong Sui Foon, both 48, have been charged under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act.
Lim, a freelance trader, faces one charge under the Act, which requires employers to be responsible for the well-being of their foreign employees, including providing them with adequate food. Chong faces one count of abetting her husband in committing the offence. Both were convicted last March.
They pleaded guilty after a highly publicised three-day trial in December 2015 that revealed how their helper, Ms Thelma Oyasan Gawidan, was provided with two meals a day, which consisted mostly of slices of white bread and instant noodles. Her weight plummeted from 49kg to 29kg within 15 months.
Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Tan Soo Tet said that Lim and Chong should receive the maximum jail sentence, which is reserved for the “worst cases of the offence”.
By depriving Ms Gawidan of adequate food, she lost 40 per cent of her body mass, stopped menstruating, and suffered emotionally and psychologically. Their offences were not adhoc but relentless, depriving her of food over 15 months.
However, District Judge Low said he found that there was a “conceptual difficulty” because the sentencing precedents cited by the prosecutors were for offences of voluntarily causing hurt to domestic helpers under the Penal Code, even though the couple were charged under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act.
DPP Tan said that the provisions under the Penal Code and the Act are part of a framework to establish a “coherent spectrum of criminal punishment for the abuse and ill-treatment of domestic maids”, and maintained that the sentences imposed for offences of voluntarily causing hurt to a domestic helper would be “highly relevant and instructive” for this case.
In the submissions by the defence yesterday, lawyer Raymond Lye initially asked the court to call for a mandatory treatment order or probation report for Chong, who suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder.
The district judge disagreed, citing his earlier findings that Chong’s preoccupation with cleanliness would not have led her to restrict the type and quantity of food she gave to Ms Gawidan.
Mr Lye also mentioned that his clients were offering a sum of S$10,000 to Ms Gawidan as compensation. While the judge said that this seems to be “not an ungenerous amount”, he asked the defence to check if this is a “proper assessment of the damages” caused to the victim.
The case has been adjourned to March 16.
