SINGAPORE: A maid hired to look after a 92-year-old man with a brain condition showed his private parts to her boyfriend over a video call, smiling while pointing out his buttocks.
The 44-year-old Indonesian woman, whose name was redacted from court papers due to a gag order protecting the victim, was sentenced to six months’ jail on Monday (Sep 15).
She pleaded guilty to one charge of voyeurism for enabling her boyfriend to observe the vulnerable victim in a state where his genital region was exposed.
The court heard that the offender was one of two maids hired to look after the victim at a flat. He lived there with his wife, who suffers from dementia.
At the time of the offence in July 2024, the victim was 92 and suffered from a brain condition that affected his mobility. He needed assistance with daily living activities and needed to be lifted to go to the washroom. He also has possible cognitive impairment.
On the morning of Jul 27, 2024, the maid was on a video call with her boyfriend on WhatsApp.
She had picked up her boyfriend’s call and placed her phone on a cupboard before removing the victim’s diaper, which he had soiled.
The victim lay on his bed naked from the waist down.
During the five-minute video call, the maid pointed her boyfriend to the victim’s exposed buttocks region and smiled.
She also gestured to the victim to flip to the side and cleaned his private parts.
She later admitted that the victim would have been angry had he known he was being observed.
A family member reviewed closed-circuit television footage that same day and saw what happened. The victim’s granddaughter and her mother took the offender to her maid agency on Jul 29, 2024, and called the police.
They did not want to confront her as she “spoke in an abrasive manner and they did not wish to antagonise her”, the prosecutor said.
The maid was later arrested and remanded.
The prosecutor sought a jail term of between six and eight months, saying the degree of callousness and insensitivity in this case was “very high”.
The offender appeared in court via video link from her place of remand, with a reddened nose. She closed her eyes when court documents were being read out.
In mitigation, she begged for leniency, saying she was a single parent with two sons and needed to take care of her mother.
For voyeurism, she could have been jailed for up to two years, fined, or both. She cannot be caned as she is a woman.
As the victim was a vulnerable person, she faced enhanced penalties of up to double the usual maximum punishments for the offence.
