A general view of the Supreme Court in Singapore on Sep 23, 2022. (File photo: CNA/Try Sutrisno Foo)
Lydia Lam
SINGAPORE: An 11-year-old girl was abused, punished with physical exercise such as push-ups and eventually assaulted by her auxiliary police officer stepfather until she died.
The girl suffered various forms of abuse including being hit by a weightlifting bar, forced to eat chilli padi until she vomited and splashed with hot water.
When her stepfather swung the exercise bar at her head with force during a meal, the girl was knocked senseless and died four days later of head injuries including a fractured skull.
The couple pleaded guilty on Monday (Feb 27) to their involvement in causing the girl's death.
The 28-year-old man admitted to six charges including culpable homicide not amounting to murder, ill-treating the victim and voluntarily causing hurt with a weapon. Another 10 charges will be considered in sentencing.
The 29-year-old woman, who is the biological mother of the victim, pleaded guilty to three charges including allowing the death of a child and voluntarily causing hurt. Another six charges will be considered in sentencing.
The court imposed gag orders forbidding the identification of the victim and the offenders.
According to court papers, the couple started dating in May 2019 and moved in together in October 2019.
Other than the victim, who was her eldest child, the woman had two sons from another union. Her co-accused helped to care for her children, and she bore a son to him in August 2020.
In early 2020, the man began working as an auxiliary police officer with AETOS. He would get upset with the victim as he believed she was stealing and ate too slowly.
THE ABUSE
Between February 2020 and March 2020, the man asked the victim to stand on a table and hold a 1.5 litre bottle at shoulder level.If the bottle was lowered, the man would cane his stepdaughter on her arms. He also repeatedly caned her buttocks, thighs and arms, leaving bruises and causing the girl to cry.
He assaulted her with a belt before caning her again, with the entire attack lasting up to half an hour and with the victim's mother present.
The man's family members later saw the bruises and scolded him for physically abusing the girl. They threatened to report him to the police if he did it again and scolded the girl's mother for not stopping him.
One of the man's brothers advised him to use a practice called "Exercise Begin" to discipline the children instead of hitting them.
The practice involved getting the children into an uncomfortable exercise position or to perform exercises.
The couple got married in April 2020 and used the "Exercise Begin" practice to discipline the children when they misbehaved.
As time went by, the man got angry with the victim for reasons including not doing her homework or answering math questions wrongly.
Between August 2020 and October 2020, he abused the victim in the following ways for reasons including sleeping instead of studying and mistakes in her homework.
He hit her 10 times on her lips with a wooden backscratcher to punish her for lying, and he also made the victim eat chilli padi to punish her for not studying.
If she could not finish it within five minutes, he would cane her on the back of her hand and make her ingest more of it. This continued until the victim vomited.
Her mother did not stop him, only complaining to him later about having to clean the vomit up.
THE WOMAN ALSO USED THE CHILLI METHOD
On five other occasions between September and October 2020, the woman made her daughter eat chilli padi when she thought the latter was being rude or was lying.The girl did not go to school between Aug 26, 2020 and Oct 28, 2020 as the couple was afraid that her bruises and injuries would lead to the discovery of the abuse.
A student welfare officer from the victim's school, along with the victim's assistant year head, went to visit the flat to find out how the victim was doing on Sep 29, 2020.
The couple told them that the girl was sleeping and did not allow the school representatives to enter.
In October 2020, the man believed that the victim had been lying to her mother. He took a weightlifting bar, that he had bought a month earlier for his home workouts, and hit the victim in the stomach with it.
He then got her to bend over and face the ground while standing before hitting her lower back and shoulder with the bar.
In mid-October 2020, the victim ate snacks without her mother's permission and lied about it.
At about 3am the next day, her mother woke up and drank water when she saw her daughter sleeping.
Angry that her daughter had lied to her, the woman took a cup that was filled to a third with room-temperature water and topped it up with hot water.
She then went to her sleeping daughter and poured most of the hot water on her neck and head.
The girl woke up crying, shouting that it was hot. The liquid blistered her skin and left her with large areas of hypopigmented scars on her forehead, neck and the back of her head.
When her stepfather found out about this, he agreed with his wife to continue keeping the girl at home to prevent the school from finding out about the abuse.
GIRL'S SCHOOL TRIED TO CONTACT HER
On Oct 15, 2020, the man received a request from the student welfare officer from his stepdaughter's school for a video-call with the girl and officers from the Child Protective Service (CPS).The officer had been requesting to see the girl, but her mother had repeatedly rejected her.
The officer told the girl's mother about the Compulsory Education Act and insisted on seeing the victim.
The girl's mother discussed the matter with her husband and agreed to have the victim sit in a darker location so her injuries would not be visible, and to pretend to be disengaged.
Eventually, the CPS officer called and got to speak to the victim. However, as the environment was dim and the victim was wearing long-sleeved pyjamas, the officer did not observe any injury on her.
In mid-October 2020, the man was very angry with the victim for shielding herself when he was trying to discipline her.
He pinned her down and punched her head while shouting "you cover now la, cover". His wife was present and shouted "you want the child to die is it".
The man stopped and his wife attended to the victim, seeing that the girl's face was red and her forearms bruised.
She did not dare to apply medicated oil on the victim as the latter said it hurt. The girl's face swelled up so much that her eyes could not be seen the next day.
The man applied medicated oil to the girl's head, and she shook in pain as he did so.
In early November 2020, the man noticed that the victim was eating her food very slowly and got angry. He told her she should know what she needed to do, and the girl got into a push-up position, while crying.
She could not maintain this position and dropped to the floor a few times, incurring the man's anger.
He took the exercise bar and beat the girl about five times on her back while she was in the push-up position, causing the girl to fall on the floor.
The victim pleaded to be allowed to eat, and the man scolded her for wasting food. He told her that she had to maintain the push-up position and would hit her hard on her back with the exercise bar every time she fell.
This happened several times, and the man felt the girl was pretending to fall to escape punishment. He told the girl to stand and do "Buddha claps", where she clapped her hands over her head.
He told his wife to throw away the food if the children wanted to play with it, and the victim threw her food away on her mother's instructions.
THE FATAL INJURIES
On Nov 6, 2020, the man was unhappy with the girl for appearing to be ignoring her mother. He took the exercise bar and assaulted her with it multiple times.That evening, while the victim was scooping rice onto her plate for dinner, her stepfather got frustrated with her for being slow.
He asked her why she was taking so long. The girl did not reply, angering the man. He hit the girl on her thighs with the exercise bar.
As she was trying to avoid her stepfather's blows, the girl's food fell off her plate onto the floor.
The man shouted at her to pick it up. The girl was still eating about 20 minutes later, and the man shouted at her to eat faster.
He asked her why she ate so slowly, and she replied that she was eating now. This reply enraged the man.
He took the exercise bar and swung it at the girl's head. He asked her to eat faster, but the girl continued to eat at a pace he perceived as slow.
The man continued to swing the exercise bar at the girl, striking her head and shoulders. The girl raised her shoulder to protect herself, but this irritated the man.
He stopped as he wanted to catch the girl off guard. When the girl resumed eating, the man swung the exercise bar at her head with force, striking her head and causing the bar to be bent.
The girl was knocked senseless and fell backwards and sideways onto the floor, her food splattering.
The girl had sustained head injuries from the blows. These included skull fractures, contusions on her brain and bleeding on her scalp.
The man's wife had not intervened even though she knew what was happening.
She realised that her daughter was not moving after falling down and had blacked out.
The man carried the girl to the toilet, spraying and sprinkling water on her face, reciting prayers and repeatedly calling her name.
The girl later woke up and the man gave her water and sweets to eat. However, he realised that the girl was bleeding from her ear.
He checked her head and realised it was swollen. He began to panic, as he knew the girl required medical attention.
THEY DECIDED NOT TO TAKE HER TO HOSPITAL
He discussed with his wife over whether to take the girl to the hospital but decided not to as they did not know how to account for her injuries.The man knew that he would be arrested if they took the girl to the hospital, and the woman was worried that her children might be taken away from her.
The man left for work as he was running late and asked his wife to take care of the victim and to update him.
The victim grew dizzy and later could not grasp with her right hand nor clench it.
Her stepfather told her to do exercises with her arms such as arm rotations and guided her through them. He also asked her to clench and unclench her fists repeatedly.
After observing the girl for a while, he realised that the victim was avoiding using her right hand. He grew angry because he believed that the girl's arm would "stabilise" if she used it.
He got the girl to go into a push-up position, but she could not hold it and kept falling. He warned her that he would beat her up if she did not get up, and made her do a push-up position with only her right arm.
The girl was unable to do so. The man was very angry and beat the girl on her back with the exercise bar.
His wife witnessed the beating and told him "enough", asking him if he wanted to beat her to death.
On Nov 9, 2020, the victim was having her arm massaged by her mother in a manner that caused the girl to struggle and cry in pain.
Her mother told her to endure it, but the girl continued to cry. Irritated, the woman forcefully bit her daughter on her arm thrice, wanting to stop the girl from crying.
The girl cried out in pain and her mother apologised. There were bite marks left on the girl's arm.
THE GIRL DIES
On Nov 10, 2020, the girl told her mother that she was in pain, and that she was feeling dizzy. When she tried to stand up at about 10.20am, she collapsed onto the mattress and did not respond.Her mother tried shaking her, slapping her face and asking her to wake up, but the girl did not respond although she was breathing and blinking.
The woman called her husband to say the victim had blacked out. Her husband told her to wash the girl's face and to pray for her.
The victim's mother later called for an ambulance while her neighbour checked on the victim and found no pulse nor heartbeat.
Paramedics arrived and took the girl to hospital, accompanied by her mother. The stepfather rushed to hospital after returning his arms and equipment and being granted permission.
When he saw uniformed police officers arriving at the hospital, he became scared. He agreed with his wife that they would say the girl sustained injuries from falling from the stairs while skateboarding.
They gave this response to a doctor, but the hospital later alerted the police.
The girl could not be revived and was pronounced dead at 12.40pm. She weighed only 20kg.
While her mother and stepfather waited at the hospital, they deleted messages from their phones to cover up what happened.
The man tried to get his wife to get a third party to dispose of his exercise bar, but his wife refused.
AUTOPSY AND PSYCHIATRIC ASSESSMENTS
An autopsy found that the girl had died of a head injury. She also had multiple injuries including fractures of her skull, bruises all over her body, fractured ribs, bite marks and blunt force injuries on her head, face, chest, hips and limbs.She also suffered internal injuries including contusions on her brain, which was swollen.
The offenders were given psychiatric assessments at the Institute of Mental Health after their arrests.
The man had no mental illness at the time of the offences and was not intellectually disabled.
He was previously a victim of child abuse and was vulnerable to being an abuser himself, due to his previous traumatic experiences, the IMH psychiatrist found.
The woman did not suffer from any mental disorder or intellectual disability, but suffered an adjustment disorder due to the stress of being remanded and charged.
The case was adjourned for mitigation and sentencing at a later date.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/sin...-exercise-bar-court-culpable-homicide-3308631
