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SINGAPORE: A former customer service officer for the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) abused her maid for several months, locking her on the floor and on one occasion slapping her until her face bled, leading the woman to go down 15 floors to escape.
Nuur Audadi Yusoff, 31, pleaded guilty on Monday (September 28) to six counts of willfully causing harm to a domestic worker, and nine other counts were taken into consideration.
The court heard that Nuur Audadi and his family hired the victim, a 24-year-old Indonesian national, as a foreign domestic worker from December 1, 2017 to May 1, 2018. The aide earned S $ 580 per month.
The abuse started about a month after the aide started working for Nuur Audadi.
On one occasion in January 2018, Nuur Audadi was awakened by her daughter’s nightly crying and realized that the victim had forgotten to apply the baby ointment. He asked the victim why he did not do it, before spitting and slapping him twice.
In the weeks following this, Nuur Audadi waved a glass lid at the aide for not preparing breakfast, dragged the victim by the hair into the bathroom for not bathing the children, and dragged her by the hair to sing to the children.
The victim cried and asked to be transferred because she was mistreated, frequently scolded and occasionally spat upon, Assistant District Attorney Chong Kee En said.
Nuur Audadi promised not to beat her again and the victim continued working because she needed to send money home for her son.
On April 11, 2018, Nuur Audadi took the victim to MOM to make a report against her former employer for wages owed. The victim was grateful for this, the court heard.
THE ABUSE CONTINUES DESPITE YOUR PROMISE
However, the abuse continued. On April 21, 2018, Nuur Audadi discovered that the victim had a mobile phone and scrolled through his chats and photos.
When Nuur Audadi discovered photos of her children uploaded to Facebook, she became angry and used the phone to slap the victim.
The victim’s face turned red and began to bleed.
Nuur Audadi confiscated the phone and in the following week slapped the victim and pulled her hair almost daily.
At the end of the week, the victim told Nuur Audadi that she had asked her agent for a transfer. Nuur Audadi slapped her again, saying that she had paid a lot of money to hire her.
The victim then recovered her confiscated phone from Nuur Audadi’s bedroom and hid it as she wanted to call her maid agency.
When Nuur Audadi discovered that the phone was missing from his room, he used a comb to hit the victim on the forehead. The aide denied taking the phone and Nuur Audadi told him to look for him until midnight.
That night, Nuur Audadi made the victim sleep in the living room. He also closed the door to the victim’s room and the front door to the apartment to prevent the aide from escaping.
The next day, the abuse continued, with Nuur Audadi pulling the victim’s hair and kicking his head. Later that night, as Nuur Audadi was tugging at the victim’s hair, he felt that it was greasy and dragged the maid by the hair to the kitchen, where he sprayed water on it and told him to bathe.
Later that day, Nuur Audadi felt that the assistant was taking too long to prepare milk for her children and questioned her.
He also asked the victim if “she was a prostitute and was flirting with her husband,” according to court documents. He then hit the victim with a broom several times, while scolding her for “being a prostitute”.
THE VICTIM DECIDES TO ESCAPE, GOES UP FROM BALCONY BY BALCONY
After this incident, the victim decided to escape from the locked apartment.
At approximately 2 a.m. on May 1, 2018, the aide went out onto the balcony and into her room, where she collected some of her things.
He threw his clothes off the floor before heading down 15 floors of the building, going down balcony by balcony until he reached the ground floor.
“The escalation took her all morning,” said the prosecutor. He later filed a police report after asking his agent for help.
She sought treatment in a hospital for bruises on her face from slapping, abrasions on her side and pain in her head from having her hair pulled out.
The victim remained in the Indonesian embassy thereafter and continues to fear Nuur Audadi to this day, the court heard.
Deputy Prosecutor Chong Kee En requested more than 10 months in jail, calling this case “vicious abuse.”
“Unsatisfied with the increasing and gratuitous violence she was inflicting on the victim … the defendant decided to lock the victim in the unit. Desperate to escape from her abuser, the victim risked her life and went down 15 stories in the dead of night . ,” he said.
He said the injuries inflicted were a combination of physical and psychological harm, and that the defendant was provoked “by the flimsiest of excuses to get angry.”
Aside from the physical abuse, Nuur Audadi demoted the victim by calling her a prostitute, violating her privacy by checking her phone and telling her that no one would hear her screams after cutting her off with a key.
“The defendant should have known better since she was a MOM customer service official,” Chong said.
“Instead, he repeatedly abused the victim. Even despite this, he was well aware that what he was doing was wrong, given that he promised that he would not hurt the victim again,” Chong added.
While Nuur Audadi pleaded guilty, he noted that he did so just one week after the trial. He will return to court in November for sentencing.
For each count of willfully causing harm, Nuur Audadi can be imprisoned for up to two years, fined up to S $ 5,000, or both. As the offenses were against a domestic worker, the penalties can be increased up to one and a half times the maximum.
