Is having OCD a valid excuse or defense for starving your maid?

There has been a disturbing story that has emerged from Singapore recently and I thought I'd do a short piece to comment on the defence offered by the husband of couple who are currently on trial for starving their Filipino maid Thelma Gawidan. Lim Choon Hong claimed that the wife Chong Sui Foon had OCD and had no evil intention of starving their maid. Basically, he tried to paint the wife as a person who has all kinds of mental problems: OCD, anorexia - that she was only a simple person with primary education. Of course, all this is complete utter bullshit.

Okay, so Chong is a woman with OCD - why didn't she starve her children and her husband? Why did she only starve the maid to this pathetic state? If the drastic weight lost of the maid Gawidan was attributed to the OCD trait of Chong, then why aren't the rest of the family starving as well? As you can see in the photo of the couple on the ST website, the husband looks very well fed: I would even go as far as to describe him as plump and fat. It just doesn't add up - if the maid was denied food because of some strange obsession of Chong to keep the kitchen clean, then why wasn't the rest of the family denied food by the same token? Again, I don't buy that bullshit excuse and I just hope the judge won't as well. Boy if you guys had trial by jury (which you don't in Singapore), then this couple would be screwed. 

Even if there was some kind of strange behaviour on the part of Chong attributed to her OCD, why did Lim (the husband) simply stand back and do nothing, allowing the maid to starve for 15 months? This makes him just as guilty and culpable - if not even more guilty, neglecting his duty of care to his maid. Why did he choose to look the other way? He probably felt that the maid was less than human, that she wasn't worthy of his attention, that her suffering wasn't worth caring about. This is what pisses me off about Singaporeans who mistreat their maids - they have this overblown sense of importance as an employer, that gives them the right to abuse their maids as they deem fit, that they are somehow superior to their maids. By that token, this makes Lim even more guilty - so if they are going to let Chong off on account of her mental illness, then they should lock Lim up and throw away the key (and starve him).

Furthermore, claiming that they never had any intention to starve her or deprive her of food doesn't make them any less culpable of the result of their maid losing over 20 kgs of her weight. Let's put it this way, if I was in Singapore, I would feel very tempted to give Lim Choon Hong a good slap across the face - oh why stop there, I would use him as a punching bag and practice my martial arts on his fat body. I would gladly kick the shit out of that douchebag with great pleasure. Judging by the comments on social media, many Singaporeans feel the same way too. Oh wait, does that tantamount to assault and that's illegal? What if I claimed that I had no intention to hurt Lim Choon Hong, that I only had intentions to show him the errors of his ways and send him a clear message that what he did was unacceptable? Does the lack of intention to hurt Lim excuse the fact that any kind of assault is illegal? Of course not.

I refer you to the case of Neo Gim Huah - the coward who slapped Amos Yee as Yee left court. Neo pleaded that he had his best intentions for Yee - but at the end of the day, was the judge going to let him off on the basis of his intentions? Of course not. Well, Neo got away with just three weeks in jail (the maximum sentence was 2 years) and at least he wasn't allowed to get away with hitting Yee (regardless of how he may have felt about Yee's actions). I was really hoping for Neo to be jailed for a lot longer. That is how the law works, whether or not your actions are premeditated doesn't make you any less guilty of having committed the offence. Nobody wakes up one day and hatches a plan to hire a Filipino maid only to abuse and torture her by starving her half to death - but when you end up with that result, well, you're still totally guilty of having starved her half to death. No ifs, no buts, no excuses, no sir.

As for Lim's attempt to use the defense that Chong was a simple woman with only primary education, does that mean that a person with only primary education is incapable of malice, wickedness and evil? Of course not. There is clearly no correlation between one's education level and moral compass - regardless of whether you are illiterate or are a brain surgeon, you still have to take responsibility for actions. There isn't any kind of provision in the law to excuse uneducated/illiterate people for crimes they have committed - the saying that comes to mind is, "小孩子懂不事" (the little child is ignorant, an excuse often used by adults when their child does something wrong).  In Chong's case, her lack of any further education beyond primary education does not hinder her ability to tell right from wrong when it comes to starving her maid in this manner - so unless they can prove that she is so mentally disturbed that she cannot be held responsible for her actions, her education level is totally irrelevant to this case. Hypothetically speaking, if she really was that mentally disturbed, then that raises even more questions about why Lim (the husband) allowed the situation to continue for this long - neglecting the needs of both his wife and his maid. He is the real villain here.

I have read this other article on CNA which detail Lim's defence, again - I summarize it in one word: bullshit. He comes across as a monster who is obsessed with his work and is in total denial about just how fucked up the whole situation with his wife is. I don't know if he is deliberately trying to paint Chong out to be some kind of mega-OCD freak (They don't even use the bedrooms and toilets of their own home?) but if this was really the case, then she clearly needed help. But no, he allowed her in all her eccentricities to run amok and she was allowed to do as she pleased in managing the household, including determining how much the maid was fed. This paints a picture of a man who not only didn't care about his maid, oh no, he doesn't even give a shit about his wife. The fact that one of their children ran away from home in 2010 (and has not returned since) is testament to just how dysfunctional they are as parents and what kind of environment their home was. Yes, it is clear that Lim is in total denial, what kind of game is his lawyer playing at? Did the lawyer think that this ridiculous story would somehow convince the judge of their innocence?

Finally, in claiming that the maid didn't complain about the weight loss, now that's once again complete and utter bullshit. The poor maid endured starvation to earn money for her family back in the Philippines and when she requested for a transfer, Lim threatened to send her back to the Philippines.It was clear that Lim and Chong were complicit in bullying and threatening their maid - it is just hideous to think that these two could be so callous, to think that they can get away with treating their maid in this manner. Oh they are wicked, they are evil and I would like nothing more than to see them thrown in jail for a very, very long time. Heck, I don't normally support the death penalty, but in this case, I would gladly like to see them hanged: just like in another case in Malaysia whereby a couple were sentenced to death for the neglect and abuse of their maid which resulted in the maid's death. If anything, hanging these two would send a very clear message to all Singaporeans to treat their maids with a bit more dignity and respect. 杀一儆百 - as the saying goes, or I suppose in this case, 杀二儆百. Whilst that's not going to happen, I do hope they are made to pay a lot of compensation to the maid as well for her suffering.

Hanging is too good for this two. I'm not going to beat around the bush. These two are just pure evil. I am not being insensitive to people with mental health issues, but to try to use it as an excuse for mistreating another human being like that is simply unbelievable and unacceptable. People like that should have never been allowed to have maids in the first place - the law needs to change now to protect the rights of maids in Singapore. Many thanks for reading.