Man jailed 6 months for hitting, burning toddler
By Alvina Soh
POSTED: 17 Jun 2013 10:21 PM
SINGAPORE: A man was sentenced to six months' jail on Monday for hitting a toddler with a plastic hanger and burning his foot with an iron.
The boy, who was 1 year and 9 months old at the time of the incident, suffered from second-degree burns on his foot.
The 26-year-old man, whose girlfriend is the child's aunt, cannot be named to protect the identity of the child.
The man was found guilty of ill-treating a child under his care after a six-day trial that started in September last year. The man is a firefighter with the Singapore Civil Defence Force.
The man was asked to look after the child by his girlfriend at a flat in the western part of Singapore in the morning of 7 January 2011.
He was later awoken by the child's cries and then found the living room and another room to be untidy. Believing the child to be the cause of the mess, the man became angry and hit the child's left palm with a plastic clothes hanger.
Some family members noticed later in the evening that the child had red marks on his chest and buttocks and blisters on his right foot. The man claimed he did not know what caused the blisters when questioned.
The child was taken to the hospital the next day and the man was arrested on 31 January.
In his recorded statements to the police, the man said that he had burnt the child with an iron and hit him with a clothes hanger.
The man had stated he was "enraged and saw an iron there and turned it on low heat" and "dabbed it" on the child's feet.
He added that he "just used the tip of the iron for a few seconds."
The man however denied burning the child during the trial.
He also claimed that he was afraid of the police, which resulted in him falsely confessing to burning the child.
As part of his mitigation, the court had heard that the man was remorseful and treated the boy like his own son.
However, Deputy Public Prosecutor Norman Yew said the "attack was clearly unreasonable and had caused unnecessary physical injury to the child".
In his sentencing, District Judge Eddy Tham agreed with the prosecution that the act was "not done out of discipline, but out of frustration".
Noting the serious harm caused, Judge Tham described the use of the iron as "a clearly cruel and unacceptable way to inflict punishment on a child".
He added that there was "nothing acceptable" in the man's mitigation and that a custodial sentence was clearly called for.
He could have been jailed up to four years and fined up to S$4,000 for the offence.
- CNA/jc
