Couple Who Murdered Young Daughter Get Life In Jail

The High Court on Tuesday sentenced a couple to life imprisonment for the murder of their five-year-old daughter in 2018, with the judge calling it a case of extreme cruelty.

The five-year-old’s father, 29, had earlier been unanimously convicted by a seven-member jury, while the jury reached a six-to-one guilty verdict for the girl’s 30-year-old stepmother.

The girl's 56-year-old step-grandmother, meanwhile, was given five years in prison after the jury found her guilty on two counts of neglect.

The father and stepmother had earlier pleaded guilty to two counts of cruelty towards the girl as well as their son, who was eight years old at the time.

The court heard that the couple’s other child, who is the biological daughter of the stepmother in this case, was not targetted.

The court had heard that the couple had repeatedly abused the girl, and more than 100 wounds were found on her body.

The court heard that on January 5, 2018, the father had performed an action described as “flying high” with the his daughter – holding her under her armpits and forcefully throwing her upwards a number of times, even though she cried and asked him to stop.

Her brother, identified as Y in the courtroom, had said his sister’s head had heavily bumped into the ceiling.

The girl collapsed at home at noon the next day and the father called an ambulance. She was pronounced dead shortly after being sent to hospital, with an autopsy finding she had died of septicaemia, or blood poisoning.

The court said the girl would not have suffered from the infection had she not been so ill-treated and had she been given timely medical care.

Judge Albert Wong said there is direct evidence that the couple had hit the girl with a rattan stick, a cloth hanger, and slippers, and punched her with his fist. He said evidence shows that the boy had also been repeatedly hit and punched.

On some occasions, both children had been ordered to stand for long hours and deprived of food for several days.

The court added that the psychological impact on the boy cannot be ignored and is likely to be long-term.

In sentencing, Wong said this was a case of extreme cruelty of two children over a period of about five months.

He noted that there might have been happy moments in the family but he believed such episodes were only a few glimpses of consolation in the “miserable period of life” of the two children.

The couple were also each sentenced to nine-and-a-half years on the cruelty counts, which will be served concurrently with their life sentences.

The court also said the girls’ grandmother – the stepmother’s mother – had seriously neglected the child by not taking her to a doctor. And her neglect took place in circumstances amounting to “acquiescence or connivance.”

It said the woman was the only person who could have offered help to the children, but for “selfish reason” she decided not to do what she should have done.

Throughout the sentencing hearing, the stepmother and her mother kept their heads bowed, while the father, wearing a blue windbreaker, showed no emotion.

After passing the sentences, Wong said he noted that the mother had previously taken an oath in court with a Bible.

He then read out a verse in the Gospel of John, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

______________________________