AN INDONESIAN maid came out of her employer's flat to reset a circuit box after the unit had suffered a disruption in electricity supply.
She told a man, who lived opposite the flat, about the problem, but instead of helping her, he pushed her back into her employer's second-floor flat and raped her twice.
Yesterday, the 45-year-old jobless man was convicted of forcing his way into his neighbour's flat, raping the maid twice and trying to murder her. He is expected to be sentenced on Friday.
The woman, who was 26 when she was attacked in 2009, was found naked and groaning in pain at the foot of the block in the central-eastern part of Singapore by passers-by.
The man had faced five charges - two of aggravated rape and one each of attempted murder, causing hurt with a dangerous weapon and trespassing.
Yesterday, Justice Chan Seng Onn found him guilty on all five counts but made an amendment to the attempted murder charge.
The man was initially accused of trying to murder the maid by strangling her with raffia string and then throwing her out of the kitchen window.
The judge found him guilty only of the act of choking the maid, saying that the prosecution had not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he had hurled her out of the window.
During his trial last year, the man's lawyers asserted that the maid had jumped out of the window in an apparent bid to escape.
The court has ordered that the identities of the accused and the victim not be published.
The attack took place on Sept 9, 2009, in the afternoon.
That morning, the electricity supply to the flat where the maid was working had tripped. The accused, who lived in the opposite unit with his mother, helped to restore the supply.
At about 1.30pm, the maid's employer and family left the flat, leaving her alone. The electricity supply tripped again when she was doing her chores.
She opened the door, intending to reset the circuit box outside the flat. The man then appeared and asked her what the problem was.
When she told him, he suddenly pushed her into the flat and shut the door.
She was dragged, screaming and struggling, into the master bedroom where he raped her. She was then dragged into another bedroom and raped a second time.
He later dragged her to the kitchen where he placed a pair of scissors against her neck.
He poked her in the abdomen and cut her chin. He then wound raffia string around her neck.
The man, a former security guard, was arrested near another block of flats in the neighbourhood.
The maximum punishment for attempted murder is life imprisonment. Aggravated rape carries a jail term of between eight and 20 years and at least 12 strokes of the cane on each charge.
The maid has since returned to Indonesia.
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