Singapore family in court for treating woman as slave, chaining her up and knocking out teeth

The victim was made to do chores without pay, confined to the flat for a year and a half, and chained nightly either to a bed, a metal plate fixed to a wall or to the toilet bowl. Photo: Shutterstock Images

A woman who initially sought refuge with a Singapore family after running away from home became their slave after angering one of the women by engaging in a sex act with her husband.

Four of the family members pleaded guilty on Thursday to various crimes including assaulting the 30-year-old woman and lying to the police to protect the family.

Muhammad Iskandar Ismail, 32, received two months and four weeks’ in prison for lying to the police and voluntarily causing hurt. His brother Muhammad Iski Ismail, 29, was jailed for eight months for lying to the police and asking his brother to lie as well. Their two sisters, 39-year-old Hasniza Ismail and 34-year-old Haslinda Ismail, will be sentenced at a later date.

The case involving their mother, Hasmah Sulong, is pending in the High Court, while Haslinda’s husband was given three weeks’ jail in November for his role in the case.

The two sisters and their mother abused the victim by twisting her toes with a pair of pliers, knocking out her teeth with a hammer and splashing boiling water on her groin area.

Even though she suffered burn injuries and blisters and became incontinent, none of the family members called for medical help. Instead, they applied Dettol, cream or medication on the wounds. It was only when Hasniza noticed that the victim was too weak to get up or eat, and had dark liquid flowing from her mouth and nose that she called for an ambulance.

For weeks before this, the victim had been chained half-naked to the toilet bowl, sitting in her own excrement and eating off the bathroom floor. She was taken to hospital and found to be dangerously ill, suffering from pneumonia and with sepsis from her burn wounds. Health care workers expected her to die.

The woman, who has intellectual disabilities and is considered a vulnerable victim, had multiple injuries over her body – deformities in her ears, 10 missing teeth, a deformed toe – and was severely malnourished.

She required eight hours of resuscitation in the hospital’s emergency department and was transferred to another hospital in light of her severe burn injuries. She eventually recovered and was discharged more than three months after admission, but still suffers permanent deformity in her ear.

The victim spent three months recovering in a Singapore hospital. Photo: Xinhua

HOW IT BEGAN

The court heard that the victim got to know the Ismail family as she went to school with one of the siblings. After running away from home in early 2016, the victim began staying with them and agreed to pay the matriarch of the household, Hasmah Sulong, S$150 (US$113) for laundry and slept on a mat in the living room.

Hasniza knew that the victim was intellectually slow and had mental problems, and admitted thinking of her as “a girl who was easy to eat”, meaning she would comply with instructions, even those involving sexual acts. Hasniza discussed with Haslinda that they should make the victim their “babu”, or slave. Hasniza would punish the victim by slapping or hitting her whenever she did something “wrong” such as being unhygienic, lying or not obeying orders.

Between May and June 2016, Haslinda accused the victim of performing fellatio on her husband, 33-year-old Egyptian Hany Aboubakr Abdelkarim Abdelfattah. She made him slap the victim and after this incident, the family began the abuse.

In June 2016, the victim’s father went to her workplace at a fast food outlet and pleaded with her to return home. She agreed but Haslinda turned up at the restaurant demanding money for outstanding laundry fees and probing the victim on her reasons for leaving. Haslinda took the victim’s phone and made her follow her back to the flat. She confined the victim in the flat and did not allow her to return to work. The victim had to sweep and mop the house before she was allowed to eat breakfast. She was also tasked with looking after the children in the flat.

She did not attempt to flee, as she was chained up at night, the court heard, and the family threatened to smear her reputation by saying they would call her a thief if she tried to escape.

Indonesian domestic worker Parti Liyani was acquitted in September after battling for four years to clear her name after her former employer’s family accused her of theft. Photo: Twitter

In one incident, during the Hari Raya Haji festive period in September 2017, Hasmah gave the victim two packets of rice noodles. Haslinda threw away one packet and urinated into the other, which she made the victim eat.

The abuse continued until around mid-January 2018, when she was hospitalised.

When they were questioned by the police, the family members initially denied the crimes on Hasniza’s instruction and claimed that the victim had turned up at their house two weeks earlier. Iski, Hasniza’s brother eventually told the truth. The prosecution sought nine-and-a-half years’ jail for Haslinda, calling this “an appalling case of abuse, cruelty and vileness”.

The victim treated the Ismails as her family, but they essentially treated her as a slave, said Deputy Public Prosecutor Ang Feng Qian.

Fuente de la Información: https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3116957/singapore-family-court-treating-woman-slave-chaining-her

Comparte este contenido:

Encadenada a la taza del inodoro