SINGAPORE: A 34-year-old woman who splashed hot water on her children, after suspecting one of them had stolen money from her, was sentenced to one-and-a-half years of probation on Thursday (Jan 9).
The single mother of four is required to receive psychiatric assessment and comply with any medication and psychiatric treatment she is prescribed.
She must also participate in counselling programmes by her social service agencies as necessary, and follow the safety plan put in place by the Child Protective Service.
Her probation order will be reviewed after nine months. Her sister also took on a S$5,000 (US$3,650) bond to ensure her good behaviour during the probation period.
The woman cannot be named due to gag orders protecting the identities of her children. They were aged eight, nine, 10 and 11 at the time of the offences in July 2022.
She previously pleaded guilty to one count of ill-treating a child in her care, with another three charges relating to her other children considered in sentencing.
On the morning of Jul 2, 2022, the woman asked her eldest child, an 11-year-old girl, to retrieve S$20 from her wallet to buy bread for breakfast.
When the girl said there was only S$5 in the wallet, the woman was surprised as she recalled having S$60 the night before.
She suspected that one of her children had taken the money, as they had previously, and instructed them to look for the cash.
As they looked, she boiled water in the kitchen, filled three-quarters of a tumbler with the hot water, then went to the bedroom where they were.
She splashed the hot water in their direction and asked them to return the money.
When the children continued to deny taking the money, their mother refilled the tumbler with hot water and splashed it at them again.
She repeated this until she had splashed each child once. The children cried and ran around the bedroom apologising as they were scalded by the water.
When the children stopped searching to prepare for school, the woman noticed burns on her nine-year-old son. She checked the other kids and realised they had similar injuries.
She began to cry and applied medicated oil on them before calling her sister to come over. An ambulance was subsequently called by the Singapore Civil Defence Force.
The woman’s 10-year-old daughter suffered burns on 10 per cent of her body, including her left arm, stomach and thighs.
She required general anaesthesia and had to go for serial wound inspections and dressing changes. She had a soft scar of about 2cm by 1cm on her left arm, with permanent scarring likely.
The eight-year-old daughter had burns over 7 per cent of her body, while the 11-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son had burns on 1 per cent and 2 per cent of their bodies respectively.
The woman’s lawyer, from the Public Defender’s Office, previously said that she had single-handedly raised the four children after overcoming a poor family background, an abusive ex-husband and persistent depressive disorder.
Despite only having a primary school education, she had worked hard and sought help from social service agencies to upskill herself and care for her children, he told the court in a previous hearing.
On Thursday, Deputy Public Prosecutor Tin Shu Min said the prosecution did not object to probation according to the terms recommended by the probation officer.
Ms Tin said the woman’s actions after the offences demonstrated her genuine remorse, and that there was also evidence of an extremely strong propensity for reform.
For example, the woman continued to work with her family service centre at her request, even though she had already moved outside of their service boundary.
The external agencies she worked with were able to vouch for her ability as a parent, and her offences were deemed out of character. Her probation officer also assessed her risk of reoffending to be low.
The woman faced some risk factors, like a lack of supportive external relationships, but this could be weighed against the fact that she was motivated to reform herself in order to provide for her children.
Ms Tin also noted that the children had started reintegrating with their mother, and that imprisonment could disrupt that process and affect the woman’s ability to stay employed. She is her family’s main breadwinner.
After ordering probation, District Judge Tan Jen Tse reminded the woman not to breach the terms of her probation order nor re-offend, or she would have to return to court to be sentenced anew.
