SINGAPORE — A woman has been sentenced to 14 years' jail after abusing her toddler, who eventually died at the hands of her husband at the time. The couple had burnt the girl's body and hid the remains in a metal pot for over five years.

The mother, now aged 35, pleaded guilty on Wednesday (Feb 7) to two counts of child abuse, one of wilful neglect and one of obstructing the course of justice. The offences related to Umaisyah, who was two-and-a-half years old when she died, as well as their other children.

Another eight charges were taken into consideration in sentencing, including ill-treating the toddler and the other children, and giving false information relating to the girl to public servants.

The abuse the mother inflicted on the children including Umaisyah involved acts such as hitting them with a belt and clothes hanger, feeding them chilli padi as punishment and leaving them unattended at home, sometimes without food.

Umaisyah died sometime in March 2014 after extensive abuse.

Instead of calling for emergency medical help or reporting the death, her parents concealed the death for about five-and-a-half years by setting the body on fire and hiding the remains at their flat.

On Wednesday, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Norine Tan, in seeking a jail term of between 14 and 14.5 years, said it was “unthinkable” that a parent would abuse her children to such a degree and continually neglect her remaining children after the death of a daughter.

The prosecution, comprising DPP Tan, DPP Wong Woon Kwong and DPP Phoebe Tan, said that the offence of the perversion of justice — which attracted the heaviest sentence of the four offences — was also “the most serious” of such cases.

The defence sought a lighter sentence of 10 years and 10 months or 10 years and 11 months behind bars, pointing to how the woman had been abused by her parents and also her husband at the time.

The defence read out in court portions of a letter written by one of the woman's sons, who said how much he loved her and was looking forward to her release.

The letter showed that the woman was deserving of forgiveness and that the manner in which the mother was portrayed by the prosecution was “not entirely” correct, it added.

In September last year, the woman's husband, who was Umaisyah’s biological father, was sentenced to 21.5 years in jail and 18 strokes of the cane.

He had pleaded guilty to culpable homicide not amounting to murder by causing his daughter's death and failing to get her medical help, among other offences.

He and the woman cannot be named under a court order to protect the identities of the surviving child victims. They have divorced since committing the offences.

However, a judge partially lifted a gag order on identify the toddler when sentencing the father, saying that it was important to remember Umaisyah by her name “and not by cold and impersonal nouns such as deceased or victim”.

THE COVER-UP AND ABUSES

The court heard that the woman married the man in June 2012. She already had children from her previous marriage.

The couple had four more children, including Umaisyah who was born in 2011.

At three to four months old, Umaisyah was placed in foster care in November 2011 because the mother was assessed to be unable to take care of her, while the father was detained at the Drug Rehabilitation Centre.

Umaisyah was returned to her parents’ custody in June 2013. From then until her death, both of Umaisyah’s parents abused her by hitting her with a belt and hanger as well as slapping and punching her.

The court heard that the mother had also fed Umaisyah chilli padi as a form of punishment at one point.

Between March 2013 and 2014, the mother also abused her oldest son. She had hit him with a belt, clothes hanger and her bare hands, and fed him chilli padi and garlic as punishment.

Sometime in March 2014, Umaisyah’s father slapped the girl a few times. She then collapsed and lost consciousness, but neither parents called for medical help after failing to resuscitate her.

Her parents tried to cover their tracks by burning her body in a metal pot, sealing the pot in a box that was kept under the kitchen stove. This became the subject of the perversion of the course of justice charge.

The mother had cautioned her younger brother against disturbing the box on a few occasions.

It was only in 2019 when the mother was in prison for other offences that the brother opened the box and the pot. He later showed the contents of the pot to his sister’s friends when they visited the flat, and the friends reported the matter to the police.

Before that, the mother had lied to public servants to avoid the discovery of Umaisyah's death.

For example in December 2017, when an officer from the Ministry of Education contacted the mother to check why Umaisyah was not yet registered forschool in Primary 1, she said that the girl was taken away by the husband and she was estranged from her spouse. This constituted one of the charges taken into consideration.

The court on Wednesday also heard that spot checks by social service officers found that there were multiple occasions since at least 2017 when the mother’s remaining children were found at home without adult supervision.

On Feb 8 and 9 in 2018, she was found to have left her children, including a two-year-old, in the flat with no adult supervision or adequate food and water, which became the subject of the wilful neglect charge.

ARGUMENTS AND JUDGES' REMARKS

The prosecution argued that the mother must be handed a punishment on the higher end of the sentencing range for each of the two ill-treatment offences, given the severity and prolonged nature of her actions.

The perversion of justice offence also involved a great degree of premeditation and persistence, motivated by self-interest.

“Through their acts and extensive lies, they successfully concealed Umaisyah’s death for over five years — and could have done so longer if not for the curiosity of the accused’s brother,” the prosecution said.

The wilful neglect offence was made “more egregious” when the accused refused to heed advice and warnings by the agencies that tried to intervene over the years.

“Her conduct can only be described as wilful and intentional.”

Defence lawyers Pramnath Vijayakumar and Sadhana Rai who had taken up the case pro bono said the abuses that the accused herself had faced could not excuse her offences, but they “provide context and backdrop” for her actions.

Ms Sadhana also argued that although the mother had committed wilful neglect, it was “inaccurate” to say that the children were left without food and water all the time.

The woman was a single mother juggling two jobs who tried her best to prepare food for her children before heading to work, but there would undoubtedly be “instances” where she fell short.

In sentencing, Principal District Judge Toh Han Li said that he rejected the defence’s submission that its client was less responsible than the ex-husband for the abuse of the children.

He said that some of the abuse committed by the woman was more serious than that done by her ex-husband, such as how she had fed the children chilli padi and garlic, while the man did not.

He also did not accept the woman’s experience of being abused to be a mitigating factor.

On wilful neglect, the judge said that the incidents outlined in the charges should not be seen in isolation, noting that such neglect had been happening since at least 2017.

Principal District Judge Toh also said that he disagreed with the defence’s position that the mother was a passive follower of her husband at the time when it came to concealing the death of Umaisyah.

The judge found that her actions were motivated by self-preservation and that she had “every intention to prevent the machinery of justice”, as evident by the times she told her brother not to touch the box.

For each count of ill-treatment or wilful neglect of a child, the mother could have been jailed for up to four years or fined up to S$4,000, or both.

For obstructing the course of justice, she could have been jailed for up to seven years or fined, or both.