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SINGAPORE: For repeatedly abusing her foreign domestic worker over the course of several months, a woman was sentenced to 10 months and two weeks in jail on Wednesday (November 18).
On one occasion, 31-year-old Nuur Audadi Yusoff hit her 24-year-old aide so badly that the victim’s face bled, prompting the younger woman to come down 15 stories from the floor to escape.
Nuur Audadi pleaded guilty in September to six counts of willfully causing harm to his assistant between December 2017 and May 2018.
This included spitting on the victim, slapping her, and dragging her by the hair because she sang to the children of Nuur Audadi or did not shower them.
Upon discovering his assistant’s mobile phone and discovering that he had uploaded photos of his children on Facebook, Nuur Audadi slapped the victim with the phone until he bled.
Nuur Audadi also called the young woman a prostitute and accused her of flirting with her husband, and then hit the victim’s face and back with a broom.
The mistreatment suffered by the assistant led her to make the decision to flee and in the early morning of May 1, 2018, she went out to the balcony of the closed apartment and climbed 15 floors, going down balcony by balcony until she reached the ground floor.
He later filed a police report after asking his agent for help.
LEE: Woman admits to repeatedly abusing the maid, who went down 15 floors to escape
Deputy Prosecutor Chong Kee En noted that Nuur Audadi had apologized to the victim, who stayed at his embassy after his escape, and paid him Singapore $ 7,020 as compensation for the injuries inflicted, in addition to four months of lost income.
However, these were “very late,” he said, urging the court to put little mitigating weight on them.
During the period of the abuse, Nuur Audadi was working as a Singtel employee deployed to support the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) support center.
Mr. Chong added that having worked with MOM, Nuur Audadi should have known better.
In his mitigation, Nuur Audadi’s attorney, Kalaithasan Karuppaya of Regent Law, asked for leniency and compassion for his client.
Kalaithasan added that his client wanted to delay serving his sentence until after January 7 of the next year, when his son was to undergo surgery.
However, Nuur Audadi stated that she did not wish to delay things further and is ready to begin serving her sentence immediately.
District Judge Ronald Gwee pointed to the “cruel treatment” the victim experienced, having suffered both physical and psychological abuse at the hands of her employer.
The victim’s willingness to go down 15 floors to escape the Nuur Audadi abuse captured the “desperate situation” the foreign domestic worker found herself in, she added.
“It is clear that in this case a deterrent sentence must be imposed to send a strong message that such cruel behavior is simply unacceptable,” he said.
For each count of willfully causing harm, Nuur Audadi could have been jailed for up to two years, fined up to S $ 5,000, or both.
As the crimes were against a domestic worker, the penalties could have been increased to one and a half times the maximum.
