Public Prosecutor v Chua Siew Wei Kathleen

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: See Kee Oon JC
• Judgment Date: 11 March 2016
• Neutral Citation: [2016] SGHC 33
• Plaintiff Counsel: Yang Ziliang (Attorney-General's Chambers)
• Docket Number: Magistrate’s Appeal No 9081 of 2015
• Date: 11 March 2016
• Hearing Date: 11 December 2015,02 December 2015
• Subject Matter: Appeal,Acquittal,Criminal Procedure and Sentencing
• Year: 2016
• Citation: [2016] SGHC 33
• Defendant Counsel: Quek Mong Hua and Jonathan Cho (Lee & Lee)
• Court: High Court (Singapore)
• Published date: 18 March 2016

See Kee Oon JC: Introduction

The respondent faced a single charge of voluntarily causing hurt to the complainant, a foreign domestic maid employed by the respondent’s sister. The offence is punishable under s 323 read with s 73(2) of the Penal Code (Cap 224, 2008 Rev Ed). She was alleged to have slapped the complainant on the cheek sometime in May 2012 at the condominium unit where the complainant was employed. The precise date and the time of the offence were not stated in the charge. She was acquitted following a trial before the Magistrate’s Court. The prosecution now appeals against the order of acquittal made by the District Judge, who heard the trial in his ex officio capacity as a magistrate.

Background facts

The respondent lived and the complainant worked in a sixth-floor condominium unit where four other persons lived. These four persons were all related to the respondent: they were her husband, daughter, sister and mother. The complainant was officially employed by the respondent’s sister, and she commenced work on 13 December 2011 and left the household on 30 October 2012.

The circumstances of the complainant’s departure from the household on the day in question are largely undisputed. Sometime around 11.00am on 30 October 2012, she climbed out of the sixth floor window of the unit onto the ledge beneath and, from there, jumped to a rooftop one floor below. She had left a brief note of five lines on a Post-it note on which she wrote, “Thank you for all the kindness” in the first line before proceeding to say “sorry” to the respondent, her sister, her husband, and her daughter in each of the remaining lines.¹ Having injured her legs in the course of her descent, the complainant received assistance from two other domestic maids who were working in condominium units in the same development. She was eventually conveyed to the offices of a voluntary welfare organisation which provides assistance to migrant workers (“the VWO”). There, she complained that she had been enduring physical abuse for some months at the hands of the respondent, her sister, and their mother. The respondent was not in Singapore on the day the complainant left the household as she was on holiday in Australia with her husband and daughter.

PW3, Celina M. Veletin, who was one of the domestic maids who attended to her on that day, testified that she felt “pity” for the complainant because it appeared that the latter’s “body, her neck, her arms are all burnt”.² In a similar vein, PW4, Ananda Valli d/o Govindapillai, who was the case worker who attended to her at the offices of the VWO, testified that the complainant’s forearms appeared to be swollen. Suspecting that physical abuse was involved, she called the police and arranged for the complainant to be sent to the hospital. While waiting for the ambulance to arrive, she took pictures of the complainant’s forearms which were eventually admitted into evidence.³

The divergent accounts given at the trial

The trial was heard over five days and the prosecution called a total of six witnesses. The complainant was the first witness to take the stand. She testified that her freedom of movement and ability to communicate with the outside world were greatly curtailed throughout her employment in the respondent’s household. She testified that she was not permitted to leave the house on her own. For instance, when she was required to wash the car, the respondent’s husband would follow her and wait for her to complete the task. While she was left alone at home on weekends, she said that the gate would always be locked and she was not able to open it as she was not given a set of keys.⁴ She was not allowed to use the telephone at home (which was secured by a dial lock) or even to answer it when it rang – it would always be another member of the house who would answer the phone.⁵

She testified that her employers were kind to her in the first three months of her employment, but thereafter the three women in the household began to inflict physical abuse on her. She said that the primary perpetrators of the abuse were the respondent’s mother and the respondent herself. The complainant alleged that apart from being punched and slapped, she was also asked to immerse her hands into a toilet bowl into which bleach had been poured as a punishment for making mistakes.⁶ When asked how the respondent, specifically, had abused her, she replied that the respondent had punched her, hit her with the receiver of the telephone, and also threatened her with a knife.⁷

By the complainant’s account, the respondent inflicted abuse on her on more than one occasion, but faced just one charge concerning an incident alleged to have occurred several months before the complainant left the household. In relation to the charge, the complainant testified that the respondent had slapped her on the cheek sometime in May 2012 and that this was the first time the respondent had abused her. She was neither able to recall where in the house this incident occurred, nor the precise time, nor the reason why the respondent had slapped her. When questioned, she explained that she was unable to recall these details because the event in question had taken place a long time ago and because the respondent had abused her many times in the interim.⁸ However, she was sure that this incident had taken place and when asked why the respondent might have done this, her testimony was, “I think the [respondent’s] mother was angry to me”.⁹

As for the apparent inconsistency between her account of events and the note that she left thanking everyone in the respondent’s household (except for the respondent’s mother) for their “kindness”, the complainant explained that she wrote this in acknowledgement of the fact that they had been kind to her in the initial months, and that she had made mistakes in carrying out her duties. But she added that she had in fact penned two notes, and the other note – which was not produced in the proceedings (and presumably had never been recovered) – contained statements to the effect of, “I’m leaving. I cannot take anymore the abuse. I’ll go somewhere where there is no bleach and no one would hurt me.”¹⁰

The second to sixth witnesses called by the prosecution were not present at the time of the incident and therefore did not testify as to its particulars. These witnesses, whom I shall refer to as PW2 to PW6 respectively, were: the first investigation officer who was assigned to the case; the domestic maid who first attended to the complainant after her escape; the case worker from the VWO; the current investigation officer; and the complainant’s cousin, who was also employed as a domestic maid in Singapore. They testified to such matters as the general condition of the complainant when she was found, the reasons which the complainant had given for her decision to leave the condominium unit, and, in the case of PW6, the fact that the complainant’s family barely heard from her during the period of her employment.¹¹

The charge against the respondent originally averred that the respondent had voluntarily caused hurt by slapping the complainant’s face. The District Judge expressed the view that this was insufficiently precise and made a minor amendment to particularise the charge as one involving the slapping of the complainant on the cheek to better reflect the evidence which had been led.¹² The District Judge called for the respondent to enter her defence on this amended charge.

The respondent elected to give evidence on affirmation and did not call any other witnesses in her defence. For her part, she said that she had never slapped the complainant. She testified that, in the first place, she did not have a lot of interaction with the complainant because she would get home at only around 8.00 pm on weekdays. As for the weekends, she explained that they were filled with a number of activities – chiefly, these included her daughter’s extra-curricular activities on Saturdays and attending church on Sundays. Therefore, she was out of the house for most of the day and would only return in the evenings. She acknowledged that she had scolded the complainant on a number of occasions but she maintained that she had never gone beyond scolding her to inflicting any form of physical hurt.¹³

When it was put to the respondent that the complainant would have had no reason to make a false accusation against her, she suggested that the complainant might have borne a grudge against her because she refused to permit the complainant to terminate her contract ahead of time. She explained that less than two months into her contract (sometime in 2012, at about the Chinese New Year period), the complainant expressed a desire to return home. However, the respondent replied that she would not permit this unless the complainant reimbursed her for the expenses that she incurred in facilitating her transfer from the Philippines to Singapore. Her unhappiness at this, she said, was the only “compelling reason” she could perceive for the complainant to have falsely alleged that the respondent had physically abused her.¹⁴

The respondent also denied the complainant’s allegations of restriction of movement and communication. She testified that a set of keys was always left beside the main door in order that the complainant may leave and enter the house freely, whether to run errands on behalf of the household or to head downstairs to purchase food for herself or otherwise. She also added that the complainant had been given an access card in order that she may activate the lift to gain access to the condominium unit. Finally, she also said that the complainant had been at liberty to use the home telephone and that she had even purchased a number of pre-paid phone cards so that the complainant could make overseas calls on her handphone.¹⁵

The District Judge’s decision

After hearing submissions at the...