Sentosa Cove resident on trial for allegedly abusing two domestic workers

• Tan Lee Hoon is accused of physically abusing two domestic workers employed at her Sentosa Cove home
• Tan is contesting all eight charges, with her lawyer claiming that the alleged victims had changed their stories
• The court heard that footage from surveillance cameras installed in the home could not be retrieved by the police because the hard drive was missing

SINGAPORE — A Sentosa Cove resident is on trial for allegedly abusing her two domestic workers, including hitting one of them when she was helping her put on her socks, and pinching the other maid’s bicep using her toes when the woman was massaging her.

As the trial began on Tuesday (Dec 8), the court heard that surveillance cameras installed at the home of the accused, 56-year-old Singaporean Tan Lee Hoon, were missing their hard disk, so the police could not retrieve any footage.

Tan, who lives on Paradise Island, one of the five man-made islands at Sentosa Cove on Sentosa Island, is challenging all of her eight charges. She is accused of voluntarily causing hurt to Filipino nationals Lizardo Joan Lozares, 33, and Jenefer Arangote Vegafria, 39, at her home in 2018.

The charges allege that she had hurt Ms Lozares by kicking her chest, smacking her head, and hitting her torso with a stick.

She is also said to have pinched Ms Vegafria’s chest, stomach, left arm, right bicep and right thigh.

If convicted, Tan could face a jail term of up to three years or be fined up to S$7,500, or both, on each charge.

Court documents stated that Tan’s husband, Mr Sim Guan Huat, employed Ms Lozares in October 2015 and Ms Vegafria in August 2018.

The police started investigating the allegations on Oct 17 in 2018 after Ms Vegafria’s friend, Ms Francisco Ma Erica Sedano, also a domestic worker, reported to the Ministry of Manpower that Ms Vegafria was being “beaten” by her employer, claiming that she had photos of the bruises.

Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Lynn Tan Wei Ping, the investigating officer for Tan’s case, took the stand as a witness on Tuesday.

She said that no closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage could be retrieved from Tan’s home although the cameras, installed at various angles within the house, were functioning.

This was because no hard disk was found installed in the CCTV system’s server, which the police had returned to seize on Oct 21, four days after ASP Tan and other police officers first showed up at the house to begin investigations.

With this discovery, which she felt was “a bit off”, ASP Tan said that she contacted the company hired to install the CCTV system at Tan’s home to find out if Tan or any of her family members had contacted his firm to make changes to the CCTV system.

The boss of the firm said that no such requests had been made, so the hard disk should have been with the household, ASP Tan told the court.

Tan’s lawyer Sunil Sudheesan, when cross-examining ASP Tan, said he believes that the alleged victims had changed their stories a number of times.

To this, ASP Tan said that although she had taken two statements each from the alleged victims, one on Oct 17 and another one on Dec 21 in 2018, the latter ones were taken to clarify and expand upon what was already conveyed in their first statements.

“They didn’t change (their allegations), they just added more incidents,” she added.

Ms Vegafria will take the stand next when the trial continues on Wednesday.