FOR two years, a young boy was beaten and burned with heated objects by his grandaunt and her daughters, for allegedly stealing food. The abuse left the now 10-year-old permanently disfigured from multiple injuries.
On Wednesday, District Judge Liew Thiam Leng, presiding over what must count as one of the most horrific cases of child abuse here, jailed the 45-year-old woman for five years.
Two of her daughters, aged 20 and 24, were given jail terms of one-and-a-half years each.
The trio pleaded guilty.
The woman’s youngest daughter, who is 14, pleaded guilty to hurting the boy on Dec 2 in the Juvenile Court.
Her fate is pending while a report assessing her suitability for probation is being prepared.
The woman’s husband, a 45-year-old dispatch rider, has not yet been dealt with.
He is out on bail for allegedly splashing hot water on the boy.
His pre-trial conference is scheduled for Jan 20.
The family cannot be named to protect the identity of the boy, who is said to be coping well in a welfare home and is attending school.
The court heard yesterday that he is the son of the woman's niece, whose whereabouts are unknown.
The identity of the boy's father is also unknown.
The boy's birth was unrecorded, so he has no birth certificate and was not enrolled in school when the time came.
His mother was jailed when he was four, which is when he was sent to live with her aunt.
The abuse began in 2009, and continued when the family moved from Hougang to Rivervale in August last year, and then to a rental flat in Ang Mo Kio three months after that.
The woman, a cleaner, and her children often accused the boy of stealing food and playing with the gas stove, and with these accusations came the abuse that resulted in horrific injuries, said Assistant Public Prosecutor Ashraf Hassan.
The court heard earlier that on one occasion in January or February, the daughters complained to their mother that the boy had finished all the food they had.
The woman, furious, asked her children to hold the boy's hands and legs while she ladled heated cooking oil over his face, naked chest and back.
The daughters also admitted to, among other things, abetting their mother in scorching the boy with a hot ladle and in cutting his fingers with scissors.
The boy fled from the home on June 18 and was found wandering outside the Ang Mo Kio-Thye Hua Kwan Hospital two days later by a medical social worker.
The police were called in.
Defense lawyer M.S. Rajendran told the court that the woman, who divorced her husband in January, was emotionally distraught over his extra-marital affair and her financial woes.
He added that the boy's seemingly insatiable hunger added to her problems.
Rajendran said her daughters were torn between obeying their mother and taking pity on the boy, and that they now realized that they had done wrong.
The maximum penalty for causing hurt with a heated substance is a jail term of up to seven years.
Offenders may also be fined or caned.
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