SINGAPORE — An employee of a nursing home who was acquitted of molesting a semi-paralysed resident at the home is now sentenced to 16 months in jail and three strokes of the cane. 

On Wednesday (Jan 22), the Court of Appeal overturned the acquittal, saying that there was no reason to doubt the honesty of a nurse — who was the sole eyewitness of the offence — and there was nothing inconsistent or implausible about her testimony.

The prosecution had relied heavily on the nurse’s testimony for their case.

The victim, who was 55 when she was molested in 2016, was unfit to testify because she was bedbound and suffering from serious physical and cognitive disabilities.

The employee, who was 32 at the time of offence, cannot be named due to a court order protecting the victim’s identity.

He was at first convicted and sentenced in May 2018 to 22 months’ jail and three strokes of the cane.

He appealed against his conviction and sentence and the High Court cleared him of the charge in November 2018. 

Justice Aedit Abdullah ruled that the witness' account alone was not strong enough to prove the prosecution’s case beyond a reasonable doubt so as to convict the man.

At the time, Justice Abdullah saw no reason to doubt that the nurse was honest, but said that her view of the incident was not definitive, so she could have been mistaken about what she saw.

On Wednesday, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, who presided over the hearing with Judges of Appeal Andrew Phang and Judith Prakash, said that Justice Abdullah incorrectly found that the nurse’s evidence was not as reliable. He pointed out that there was nothing to suggest that the eyewitness’ line of sight was obscured or that she was too far away.

On the contrary, she had been standing one-and-a-half arm’s length away from the victim’s bed, and the curtains had been drawn open across the width of the bed, Chief Justice Menon said.

Wednesday’s outcome was the result of the prosecution filing a criminal reference to the Court of Appeal. They submitted that Justice Abdullah’s decision gave rise to legal questions of public interest, such as whether the evidence of an eyewitness is inherently less reliable than that of an alleged victim.

NURSE WAS SHOCKED

On Nov 26 in 2016, a nurse heard a crying sound coming from the victim’s bed. She recognised it as a sound the victim would make whenever she was being moved or was in pain.

Turning around, she was shocked to see the male worker straddling the victim with his trousers pulled down. The victim’s diaper was exposed and his groin was in contact with the victim’s groin area.

The nurse then quickly called out to a nursing aide, who later testified that the nurse’s tone and appearance were not normal and that she sounded as if there was an emergency.

The male worker was hired by the nursing home to do housekeeping work and later undertook maintenance and cleaning duties as a maintenance technician.

The victim suffers from a condition where she is unable to move the left side of her body including her face.

Four other residents at the home, who had conditions that rendered them unable to mingle with visitors, were in the same room when the act of molestation was happening.

However, they were all dementia patients who were incapable of communicating a narrative.

At the time, most of the other residents were attending a community event.

‘HELPING TO ADJUST PILLOW’

During the trial, the employee denied molesting the victim, claiming that the nurse was “mistaken” about what she saw.

He said that he was asked by another resident in the room to repair her portable television set.

His account was that he saw the victim’s head touching the side railing of her bed and noticed that her pillow was displaced. Tears were flowing from her eyes, so he thought that she was in pain.

He then put his knee on the bed and positioned himself on top of her to adjust the pillow, he added.

He also claimed that he did not touch her, testifying that he went to the toilet to dispose of some food remains found on her bed after assisting her.

Then, he returned to the room to place the other resident’s television set on a side table, and that resident’s friend came by to retrieve a pair of spectacles.

‘GLARING INCONSISTENCY’

The judges of the apex court believed with “no reasonable doubt” that the molestation had taken place since the nurse’s account was “so drastically different” from the man’s account.

Chief Justice Menon said that there was a “glaring inconsistency” in the man’s sequence of events when examined against what was revealed from closed-circuit television footage. 

Based on the footage and the man’s own account, he would already have reached for the victim’s pillow and helped her at least five minutes before the nurse had even entered the room, which did not add up.

The chief justice added that the man could have easily reached for the victim’s pillow without placing either of his knees on the victim’s bed given his height.

The man also could not explain the inconsistencies in his statements to the police as to whether he had placed one or both of his knees on the victim’s bed while reaching for the pillow.

SHORTER JAIL SENTENCE

In their sentencing, the judges gave the man a reduced jail term — 16 instead of the original 22 months, which was closer to the maximum 24 months for a molestation charge.

This was because they were not fully persuaded that the man had premeditated the crime. 

The district judge during the trial had concluded that there was significant premeditation because the man had chosen to strike when several of the room’s residents were away at an event.

However, Chief Justice Menon said that in their judgement, the most that could be said was that there was a significant degree of opportunism.

He acknowledged that the worker took advantage of the fact that most of the residents were at the community involvement programme, and that the remaining residents were too cognitively impaired to raise the alarm.

Such opportunism is an aggravating factor, he said, but it is not as serious as a finding that the man took “deliberate steps” by scheming to enter the room for the very purpose of sexually assaulting the victim.