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| The Kowloon court convicted the Filipina of one count of child abuse |
A Filipina domestic helper was found
guilty on Tuesday, May 23, of one of three counts of assaulting her Hong Kong
employer’s nearly two-year-old son last March, and sentenced by a magistrate in
West Kowloon Law Courts to 4 weeks in prison.
But the defendant, Shaira Joy Umbao, is expected
to be released within the day as she has been detained in the Tai Lam women’s
correctional in Tuen Mun since her March 17 arrest.
She was tried on three counts of “wilful
assault causing injury to a child,” which was amended by the prosecution to “”wilful
assault in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to a child”
before Magistrate Leung Ka-kie.
Vivian Wong, a lawyer from the Duty
Lawyers Service who represented Umbao, said her client would be released on May
24.
Umbao, a petite 28-year-old from Davao
City who arrived in Hong Kong on Aug. 3, 2022, took the witness stand Tuesday
and refuted the evidence given by the prosecution, mainly the testimony of the
child’s father, Mr Chan, and five CCTV footages purportedly showing the alleged
assaults.
Wong replayed three of the five 10-second
video clips and asked the defendant what she was doing to the boy.
Umbao replied that, in the first footage
captured at 6:15pm on March 14 that showed the defendant holding the child’s two
hands and forcefully pulling him up, the boy had been crying for several
minutes and she was afraid he would choke, so she pulled up and hugged him.
She said that moment she recalled an
incident where a six-year-old child of her friend who was left to wail for 15
minutes was rushed to a hospital because he was already choking.
On the footage showing her pressing the
child’s foot on Lego blocks, the defendant said the child loves to play with
Lego toys and stepping barefoot on the blocks, so she was showing him that it
was dangerous and painful to do that. The timer showed it happened at 7:39pm on
March 15.
Wong also asked Umbao about the third
footage, captured at 12:08pm on March 16, which showed the helper leaving the
master’s room as the boy lay crying after she allegedly threw him into the cot.
The defendant replied the boy was sleepy
and crying while they were on the bus, so she put him in the cot then left, but
returned and picked him up when she heard him crying. She said she put the
child back in the cot when he stopped crying.
Wong said the prosecution seemed to be
biased against the defendant by showing just 10-second clips of the alleged
incidents without showing what led to the alleged assaults and what happened
afterwards. She also said there were no injuries to the child.
She also asked why Chan reported the alleged
incidents to police only on the evening of May 17, saying that if the matter
was serious, then the parent’s natural reaction would be to call the police
immediately.
The lawyer also asked Umbao to tell what
happened on the morning of March 17.
The helper replied that last November,
Chan’s wife asked that her husband be awakened every 7am so that he won’t get
late for work. The company he worked for as a surveyor had a policy of fining
employees $100 whenever they arrived late.
Umbao said Chan was very upset when he
woke up at 7:40am, as she was very busy with housework that she forgot to wake
him up.
Wong also cited several loopholes in
Chan’s evidence. The lawyer also played back videos that Umbao had posted on
Facebook, starting with a shot of two hands clasping each other.
Asked whose hands were those, the helper
said it was hers and her “Ma’am’s” while they were at Hong Kong Disneyland. She
said the female employer even bought her a Disney one-year pass so that they
could go there with the child regularly.
Umbao said they were close because the
female employer was very kind to her, buying her clothes and dining out with
her and the child and letting her taste delicious Chinese dishes.
As a video she had posted on Facebook
showing her happily teaching the boy his body parts was replayed, she began
sobbing and wiping off her tears. She said she loved her ward, as she did with
three babies she nannied as a domestic helper in Davao while taking up BS
Information Technology.
She said she then applied for work in Malaysia
as a plantation worker but did not renew her contract because she and a fellow
worker were not allowed to use their cellphones during the week.
After listening to Umbao’s evidence,
Magistrate Leung went into her chamber and when she returned 30 minutes before
6:30pm, she said she considered the prosecution’s and the defense’s cases and
said there was evidence of assault on the child in the first video footage,
while the two other videos did not prove the prosecution’s case beyond
reasonable doubt.
She said she also saw some
inconsistencies in the prosecution witness’ evidence.
Finding Umbao guilty
of the first offense, Leung sentenced her to four weeks in jail.
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