• Nuur Audadi Yusoff was “triggered by the flimsiest of excuses to fly into a rage”, a prosecutor argued
• She promised not to hit Ms Sulis Setoywati again after the domestic worker asked for a transfer but the abuse continued soon after
• Ms Sulis climbed down 15 floors of balconies to flee
   

SINGAPORE — Unable to tolerate abuse at the hands of her employer any longer, Ms Sulis Setoywati decided to escape and clambered down one balcony after another starting from the 15th floor.

She then made a police report against her employer Nuur Audadi Yusoff.  

Nuur Audadi, 31, pleaded guilty on Monday (Sept 28) to six charges of causing hurt to the Indonesian domestic worker from January to May 2018. She had earlier intended to claim trial.

Nine other similar charges will be considered for sentencing on Nov 18.

The court heard that Ms Sulis worked for Nuur Audadi from December 2017 to the day she escaped on May 1, 2018.

The 26-year-old worker has since been staying at the Indonesian embassy in Singapore.

REPEATED INSTANCES OF ABUSE

The abuse started shortly after Ms Sulis started working for Nuur Audadi.

Court documents stated that at the time, Nuur Audadi was a customer service officer at the Ministry of Manpower (MOM).

The Attorney-General's Chambers have since clarified that she was an employee with telecommunications company Singtel who was seconded to the ministry's contact centre and was not an employee of the ministry.  

She no longer works there and is now unemployed.

In January 2018 when Nuur Audadi found out that Ms Sulis forgot to apply baby ointment on her infant’s stomach, she spat at her and slapped her twice while scolding her. 

The next month, Nuur Audadi struck her on the head with a glass cup cover after she did not prepare breakfast.

She was also dragged by her hair into the bathroom when she did not shower the children.

She was again pulled by her hair when Nuur Audadi heard her singing to the children. 

After these incidents, Ms Sulis cried and asked Nuur Audadi to transfer her to another employer. 

Nuur Audadi promised not to hit her again and Ms Sulis agreed to continue working because she needed to send home her monthly wages of S$580 to support her own child.

In April that year, Nuur Audadi took her to the MOM to report her former employer for wages owed. 

Ms Sulis felt grateful for this and also felt that her employer “occasionally did not differentiate her for being a maid”, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Chong Kee En told the court.

MORE SLAPPING AND HAIR-PULLING

However, Nuur Audadi continued to abuse her. 

That same month, she told Ms Sulis to clean her husband’s motorcycle and helmet but the helper later realised that she had forgotten to ask for the house key so that she could leave the flat. 

The couple had left the flat by then.

When Nuur Audadi returned, she struck Ms Sulis with an umbrella handle and used it to poke her abdomen area several times, leaving her with bruises, DPP Chong said.

In April 2018, Nuur Audadi discovered that Ms Sulis had a mobile phone and went through her personal chats and photos.

The helper had posted photos of the children under her care since she treated them like her own. Upset by this, Nuur Audadi slapped Ms Sulis on her face several times and threw the phone to the ground, causing it to crack.

She then confiscated the device and began slapping and pulling Ms Sulis’ hair on an almost-daily basis for a week.

At the end of the week, Nuur Audadi slapped her again, saying that she had “paid a lot of money” for her after she said that she had asked her agent for a transfer.

When Nuur Audadi realised the mobile phone was no longer in her bedroom, she assaulted Ms Sulis again and made her search for it until midnight.

She then made Ms Sulis sleep in the living room, locking the helper's room door and the flat door to prevent her from running away.

CALLED HER A PROSTITUTE

On April 30, Nuur Audadi assaulted her several times for reasons such as her hair being oily. She also told Ms Sulis that she was a prostitute and asked if she wanted to seduce her husband.

Not understanding what her employer was saying, Ms Sulis replied: “Yes, Ma’am.” 

Nuur Audadi then struck her with a broom while scolding her for "being a prostitute".

After this, Ms Sulis decided she had to escape. 

She climbed onto the balcony to get to her locked room, threw her clothes down to the ground floor and climbed down 15 floors. This took her the whole morning.

She later sought medical treatment at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital. She had bruises on her forehead, hip, forearm and inner thigh, as well as superficial cuts on her chest and shoulder.

She remains scared of Nuur Audadi to this day, DPP Chong said.

The prosecutor sought at least 10 months’ jail, noting that every injury that Nuur Audadi inflicted “entailed a combination of physical and psychological harm”.

She was “triggered by the flimsiest of excuses to fly into a rage” and earlier denied committing the “vicious abuse”, DPP Chong added.

The maximum penalty for causing hurt is up to two years’ jail and a fine of up to S$5,000. Employers of domestic workers, or those in their household, are liable to one-and-a-half times the punishment — resulting in up to three years’ jail and a fine of up to S$7,500.

CLARIFICATION: An earlier version of the article stated that Nuur Audadi Yusoff was a former Ministry of Manpower employee. The Attorney-General’s Chambers has clarified that she was employed by Singtel as a customer service officer and deployed to the ministry's contact centre.