SINGAPORE: A pre-school teacher, who saw her female colleague abusing a one-year-old girl under their care but did not intervene, was sentenced to 14 days’ jail on April 23.
The 29-year-old Chinese national pleaded guilty on April 10 to one count of failing to take steps to protect the child from being abused by a 30-year-old fellow pre-school teacher.
The older woman is a Singaporean and her case is pending.
The parties involved in this case cannot be named as there is a gag order on the witnesses, including the older woman.
Before handing out the sentence, District Judge James Elisha Lee said: “The clear overriding sentencing consideration in this case is that of general deterrence.”
Referring to the accused’s acquiescence of her colleague’s behaviour, the judge said it represents “a degree of complicity on the accused’s part”.
He added: “By doing nothing, as opposed to making an unsuccessful attempt to intervene, the accused was culpable for the abuse the victim was subjected to... albeit her culpability would have been lower than that of (the older woman).”
Judge Lee also said that very young children, like the victim, are among the most vulnerable members of society.
Stressing that such young children are unable to tell others about what they had been through, he added: “This makes it difficult to detect and prevent any abuse they have been subjected to, with the consequence that such abuse may continue for a long period.
“The law must therefore afford them the strongest protection possible subject to the circumstances.”
Shortly after the abuse, the younger woman was suspended from her duties and later re-deployed to an administrative role.
But on Wednesday (April 23), defence lawyer Ramesh Tiwary told the court that she is now working as a teacher in another school.
In earlier proceedings, the court heard that she entered the girl’s classroom at around 10.45am on June 27, 2022 and sat facing a table.
She then saw that the victim had been trapped with her back against a wall, behind the table and a chair.
Court documents stated that the older woman had pushed the table close to the wall to trap the child, who was a few months shy of her second birthday at the time of the incident.
On April 10, Deputy Public Prosecutor Ariel Tan told the court that the older woman committed acts including repeatedly shoving the table against the wall to prevent the toddler from escaping.
The DPP added: “At 10.49am, (the older woman) stood over the table and the victim with a blue plastic divider in hand while scolding the victim. The victim was crying at this moment.
“At 10.56am, (the older woman)...bent over the table (and) hit the crown of the victim’s head with the plastic divider.”
A nearby CCTV camera captured these acts of abuse.
The younger woman did not intervene to protect the child. She also did not report the incident to her superiors and failed to attend to the victim to check for any injuries.
The victim went home later that day and her mother spotted bruises on her face.
The next day, the victim’s parents took her to the pre-school and asked the younger woman about the cause of the bruises. She replied that she would check with the other teachers.
After the parents left the premises, she phoned a senior teacher and told her about her exchange with the couple.
The latter informed the principal of the conversation and the police were alerted following an investigation.
On April 23, DPP Tan urged the court to sentence the younger woman to at least two weeks’ jail, stressing that she had failed to protect the victim for around 10 minutes.
The prosecutor also said that the younger woman could have intervened by taking the victim away or telling the older woman to stop.
Tiwary, however, pleaded for his client to be given a fine.
Among other things, he said that his client had previously informed the principal about the older woman’s behaviour, but no action was taken.
The lawyer also said that his client had intervened on previous occasions when she felt that the older woman was being unnecessarily strict with the children.
However, this resulted in the older woman becoming angrier with them, the court heard. - The Straits Times/ANN
