JOHOR BARU: The couple involved in the controversial adoption of three-year-old girl, Angie Tiong, clarified that they only wanted to give her "a good and complete home."
Singaporean Cannie Ong, in her forties, said she was shocked to read newspaper reports about the girl's father lodging a police report claiming that the girl had been kidnapped.
"Before adopting her, we knew she came from a broken home and of her father's situation, so we felt a greater urge to take her in.
"The legal adoption process in Malaysia has been done and we did not have any ill intentions.
"We only wanted to give her a wholesome and good environment to grow up in," Ong told a press conference here on Tuesday.
Ong said she and her Malaysian husband, who holds a Singapore PR, have a son and had yearned for a daughter.
This led them to ask around to adopt a girl and eventually through a friend's recommendation, met a middle man who introduced them to Angie in September last year.
Angie's plight was widely reported by the media after her drug addict father lodged a police report that she had been kidnapped.
The father claimed that his daughter was kidnapped by a friend who took the girl on Nov 11.
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