SINGAPORE — Unable to take her employer’s repeated sexual abuse, a foreign domestic worker fled to the Ministry of Manpower after working for him for barely half a year.

During that period, the woman's employer Yau Terng Phun took pictures of her while she was in the toilet, touched her private parts over her pants while she was sleeping and also touched her breasts.

On Tuesday (Oct 29), Yau, a 56-year-old Singapore permanent resident, was sentenced to one year, three months and six weeks’ jail.

The married man from Malaysia had pleaded guilty earlier this month to three charges of insulting his domestic helper’s modesty and molesting her, with five other charges taken into consideration for sentencing.

The Indonesian helper, who is 41 years old, cannot be named due to a court order to protect her identity.

The court previously heard that she worked for Yau, who was a ship technician at the time, in his home from January to May in 2017.

On one occasion in March, she was using the toilet when he used his mobile phone to secretly take pictures of her by holding the device over the toilet door.

When she saw his hand at the top of the door, she immediately covered herself and scolded him. He merely said that he was “just kidding” before deleting the pictures a few days later.

‘MADE HOME A LIVING HELL’

The next month, she was sleeping on a mattress in the living room when Yau molested her. She usually slept with his wife in their bedroom, as the couple were not on good terms, but the helper did not want to disturb the other woman that night as she was talking on the phone.

While the helper was asleep, Yau touched her private parts over her clothes. She woke up and saw him sitting by her side.

He then slipped his hand under her top and bra to touch her.

She immediately scolded him and he replied that he could give her anything she wanted, to which she said that she wished to do the work of a domestic helper and would not do anything sexual. He then walked back to his room.

She fled his household on May 29, 2017 and went to the Ministry of Manpower, which made a police report the next day.

Investigations revealed that Yau had begun molesting the victim on several occasions about two months after she started working there.

Deputy Public Prosecutor R Arvindren sought at least 17 months’ jail, saying that Yau had caused significant harm to the worker to the point that she wanted to return to Indonesia.

“She came with her dignity and modesty intact and, ideally, should have felt safe within the confines of her employer’s household. Instead, the accused went on to sexually exploit the victim on multiple occasions and made the supposedly safe home a living hell for the victim,” the prosecutor added.

For molestation, Yau could have been jailed up to two years, fined, caned or any combination of the three. For insulting a woman’s modesty, he could have been jailed up to a year, or fined, or both.