RI maid 'tortured' in S'pore

RI maid 'tortured' in S'pore

SINGAPORE (DPA): An 18-year-old Indonesian maid covered with bruises, burns and lacerations claims she was abused by a Singaporean family for several months, news reports said yesterday.

The woman, identified only as Hartapi, said she had been scalded with hot water and beaten by her employer's wife and 13- year-old son.

Two unidentified men helped Hartapi escape from her employer's luxury condominium earlier this week and brought her to the Indonesian embassy. She is currently warded at Singapore General Hospital.

"I couldn't believe how badly she was hurt," one of the men who helped her flee said in a Straits Times newspaper report. "Whoever did this was worse than an animal."

The maid said she was last beaten on Tuesday morning, when her employer's son attacked her with a badminton racket after she woke him for school.

Photographs published in the newspaper showed the woman, her forehead bruised and swollen, her back covered with welts and her arms scalded and covered with scabs.

Police have reportedly visited the employer's home and are investigating the incident.

Other cases of foreign maid abuse have made headlines in Singapore. Last year a grandmother was jailed three months for burning her Filipino maid with a hot iron, and a sales executive was jailed for two weeks for slapping and kicking a maid, also a Filipino.