Siblings jailed for abusing maid

AN INDONESIAN maid, accused of theft, kept protesting her innocence.

But Ms Badingah, 29, was not believed - and went on to lose two of her front teeth, one after another, at the hands of a teenager wielding a pair of pliers. The 'dentist', Nur Rizan Mohd Sazali, an 18-year-old mother of one, was yesterday jailed for a total of 26 months - 12 months for forcibly extracting the two teeth and another 14 months for pouring boiling wax on the maid.

Nur Rizan was assisted by Ms Badingah's employer, Elsa Elyana Said, 25, who held the maid's head still and forced her mouth open.

Elsa, who pleaded guilty to punching the maid and abetting in the tooth extraction, will be sentenced on Oct 16.

She lived with Nur Rizan, as well as the teenager's mother and brother, in a flat in Jalan Minyak, off Chin Swee Road.

The abuse that Ms Badingah suffered at the hands of the four people under that roof took place between June 2 and July 26 last year.

Nur Rizan's brother, Muhammad Iz'aan, 20, was jailed for six weeks after having pleaded guilty to caning Ms Badingah.

The maid, in one of the punishments meted out for an unnamed infraction, had been ordered to stand facing the door through the whole night with one leg off the ground and holding her ears. Muhammad Iz'aan caned her when she put down that leg.

The siblings' mother, Maselly Abdul Aziz, 38, at first said the statement of facts read out in court contained falsehoods, but later changed her mind and pleaded guilty as charged.

Her guilty plea was rejected.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Natalie Morris said the abuses started three months after Elsa took Ms Badingah from her mother's flat to work in the Jalan Minyak household.

The four accused began suspecting that she was stealing their money and other small valuables.

Once, after Ms Badingah denied stealing their cellphones, Nur Rizan and her brother ordered her to take off her blouse.

They then bound her wrists with a bathrobe sash, after which Nur Rizan poured hot liquid wax from a melted candle over her head and back.

Pressing for a stiff sentence, DPP Morris said that over about two months, the victim was assaulted in variously 'morbidly creative ways' in a campaign of 'cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment amounting to torture'.

Ms Badingah, who had serious and extensive injuries, feared her abusers and for her life. One day, she jumped out of the kitchen window of the second-storey flat and ran for her life.

DPP Morris said that, by all accounts, the reactions of the accused were out of proportion to their respective triggering events.

Citing the Prime Minister's National Day Rally speech for Singapore to become a gracious society, the DPP argued that the considerations behind enacting heavier punishments for maid abusers 10 years ago had become more relevant now.

'As such, maid abuse, today more than ever before, cannot be tolerated, and perpetrators of extreme instances of abuse must be duly penalised,' she said.

Defence lawyer S.S. Dhillon said his clients were extremely remorseful for their actions, which were born of frustration. He said the case had brought immense shame to the family.

A Ministry of Manpower spokesman said the number of substantiated maid abuse cases handled by the police fell from 157 cases in 1997 to 68 last year.

ATROCIOUS ACTS

'Despite your youth, you have committed acts of appalling cruelty on a domestic maid.'
District Judge Jill Tan to Nur Rizan Mohd Sazali

YOUTH NOT AN EXCUSE

'You may have been instigated to do so, but you were 17 years old at the time of the offence, and I cannot believe at that age that you failed to understand how inhuman this act was.'
The judge, on the teeth extraction act, which she described as 'unthinkable'

HARSH PUNISHMENTS NEEDED

'Your guilty plea and your youth earn you a lighter sentence than I would otherwise impose. Yet, I cannot ignore the shocking and horrific acts which you subjected Ms Badingah to. Accordingly, a sufficient long term in prison is necessary for you to reflect on your deeds.'
The judge, on Nur Rizan's final jail sentence