A domestic helper was sentenced to four months’ jail for abusing a two-year-old boy who was in her care.
Ayunda Lestari Dayuki (24), from Indonesia, pleaded guilty to one charge of ill-treating the boy on 22 Sept 2016, that she has punched him three times and hit his head with a toilet brush.
A District Court today (30 Nov) heard that the boy’s mother has reproved Ayunda when she had seen her asleep in the living room while observing the CCTV footage of her flat in her mobile phone at about 8 am on 21 Sept.
The next evening, the boy’s father noticed swelling and bruising on the back of his little boy’s head.
On 23 Sept, the boy’s parents took him to NUH, where a doctor found injuries conformable with blunt force trauma. The crossed parents then reported the matter to the police two days later.
Ayunda admitted to ill-treating the child the day after she was scolded (22 Sept), when he refused a bath and would not stop crying while she was bathing him.
Frustrated and still resentful for her employer’s reproach, Ayunda then punched the back of the child’s head three times, but of course the boy cried even louder. And then she used a toilet brush to hit the boy’s head again.
“Luckily, there were no concerns relating to developmental milestones,” Deputy Public Prosecutor Kumaresan Gohulabalan said.
DPP Gohulabalan said Ayunda had targeted the child’s head, a vulnerable part of the body, so he called for a three-month jail term at the minimum.
Ayunda has abused the trust her employer had placed on her, which aggravated the case, the prosecutor said.
Before the incident, Ayunda had worked for the family for about one year.
Ayunda presented herself and she pleaded for a light sentence through a translator.
Her sentence was backdated to 26 Sept; she could have been fined up to $4,000 and/or jailed for up to four years for her maltreating behavior.