Singaporean pleads guilty to abusing her Indonesian maid

Singaporean pleads guilty to abusing her Indonesian maid

SINGAPORE (Agencies): A Singapore woman pleaded guilty to yanking her 24-year-old Indonesian maid by the hair in the middle of the night, dragging her to the toilet and beating her with a shower head, it was reported on Tuesday.

When executive secretary Chung Poh Chee saw that Sulastri Suhedi was bleeding, she stopped hitting her and pinched her earlobes instead before ordering her to do household chores, the District Court heard.

Sulastri started working for Chung in January last year.

Chung, 39, who works in the Standard Chartered Bank, pleaded guilty on Monday to three charges of abusing her maid, the Straits Times reported.

District Judge See Kee Oon scheduled a mitigation plea by Chung's lawyer for Tuesday.

Cases of maid abuse have been prominent in the Singapore media lately.

Foreign maids, mostly from the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, make up the largest group of foreign workers in the wealthy city-state.

Sulastri's ordeal started at 2 a.m. on June 5 when Chung woke her up and slapped her several times before dragging her to the toilet and assaulting her, deputy public prosecutor Christina Koh said.

The court heard Chung was angry with the maid after seeing some scratch marks on her two-year-old daughter's arm.

That afternoon, Chung slapped the young woman again when she accidentally knocked over a food blender, prompting Sulastri to escaped through a kitchen window and alerted a neighbor, who then called the police.