9 weeks’ jail for maid found guilty of mixing her menstrual blood, urine in employer’s food

SINGAPORE — A 44-year-old domestic worker was on Wednesday (Dec 8) sentenced to nine weeks’ jail for adding her urine and menstrual blood into her employer’s food.

The Filipina was found guilty of one charge of committing mischief.

District Judge Toh Han Li rejected her defence that she had lied when she confessed to various people, including her ex-boyfriend and police officers, because she was afraid of retaliation from her ex-boyfriend who had supposedly instigated her to do it.

Instead, the judge accepted the evidence of her employer, a software engineer who cannot be named due to a court order to protect his identity.

The worker also cannot be named after the judge found that the gag order should extend to her identity.

The accused, who began working for the family in May 2017, cooked most of the family's meals and sometimes took care of the employer’s children, now aged about seven and three, his wife and mother-in-law. 

She worked in the family's flat in Sengkang from about 6.30am to 10pm daily and usually got Sundays off, her employer testified.

He had further testified during the trial that he learnt about the alleged offences when the accused's ex-boyfriend told him what she had done over text messages on WhatsApp in December 2019. 

The ex-boyfriend died from cancer in April this year. 

Screenshots of the messages between the domestic worker and her ex-boyfriend were also produced in court. In one such message, she wrote to him: “Before the holiday in India, one time I do. (sic)” She was referring to a two-week holiday the family had taken in August that year.

The employer called the police the same night he received the text messages and the accused repeatedly apologised to him and his wife. A few weeks later, she sent them text messages that read, "I really sorry sir", "Please forgive me" and "Don't put me in prison".

She also admitted what she had done to the police and the investigation officer who took her statements.

District Judge Toh noted that she “sought to resile all these admissions” by saying that she had lied to all of them.

She testified that her ex-boyfriend instigated her to mix the urine and blood into the food, and she was afraid that he would retaliate against her if she told him that she did not do it. This would include sabotaging her employment or withdrawing his financial support, among other things.

However, the judge found that her claims were not credible.

He noted that she had lost contact with her ex-boyfriend for months when she gave another police statement in September last year, where she faced a more serious charge. That was when she first claimed that she had lied up until then.

During the trial when she was cross-examined by the prosecution, however, she conceded that she had no reason to be afraid of her ex-boyfriend by this time.

The judge also “found it odd” that she would implicate her ex-boyfriend if she was scared of him, since it would open him up to police investigations.

"I was also satisfied that the mixing of urine and menstrual blood would cause a change in the food so as to diminish its utility, as both the complainant and the accused had testified that the doing of such an act was disgusting,” District Judge Toh added in convicting the woman.

In mitigation, her lawyer Kalaithasan Karuppaya asked for leniency, saying that she had not been able to earn money for two years since the offence. She has been under the care of the Philippines embassy in Singapore.

Mr Karuppaya added that her family in the Philippines, including her four children aged 11 to 23, relied heavily on her income.

The accused, who turned up in court with a suitcase in tow, began serving her sentence immediately. For mischief, she could have been jailed for up two years or fined, or punished with both.