SINGAPORE, May 5 — Furious with her older brother for being able to move on with his life after molesting and raping her at a young age, she hatched plans to kill her family, including her three children.
She intended to do this with gasoline but, for a start, she injected her only son with insulin at least 13 times because she did not want him to die in pain.
She hated her son for resembling her brother and reminding her of what her brother had done.
On one occasion, when the boy was admitted to hospital, she lied that he had a seizure on a school trip to the Singapore Zoo. She had, in fact, gave him another injection.
Today, the 29-year-old Singaporean woman was jailed for five years after pleading guilty to causing hurt by administering poison.
She cannot be named because of a court order to protect her son’s identity.
She was arrested in July 2019 after the police received a call from the National University Hospital (NUH) saying that the woman had admitted injecting her son with insulin, a hormone produced in the pancreas that regulates the amount of glucose in the blood.
At the time of her offences from January to July in 2019, she was married with two daughters and the boy, who was around 7 years old. She is still married.
How it began
The court heard that when the woman was between nine and 12 years old, one of her brothers molested and raped her.
This came to light only when she was 13 and he was sent to the Singapore Boys’ Home, a juvenile detention centre, for two years.
She hated him for sexually abusing her, and her relationship with her mother also deteriorated as she felt that her mother had taken his side.
She ran away from home and got married in 2013.
Four years later, her mother moved into her home, after her father died.
Her brother visited their mother from time to time. He got married in September 2018.
Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Bhajanvir Singh said that several months later, the woman found out that her brother’s wife was pregnant and was angry at him for “being able to move on with his life”.
She then plotted to kill herself, her mother, brother and her three children.
Aside from injecting her son with insulin, her plan was to burn the others with gasoline in September 2019.
Son hospitalised multiple times
Failing to buy insulin from a pharmacy here as it required a prescription, she went across the Causeway to Johor Baru, Malaysia, where she obtained insulin pens and needles.
In January 2019, the woman and her son went to the Causeway Point shopping centre in Woodlands for lunch, where she injected him with insulin in the toilet.
She observed him for a few days and noticed that he was hungrier than usual.
The injections continued.
In June 2019, the boy was admitted to NUH after he suffered severe headaches associated with nausea, vomiting, double vision and numbness in his fingers.
He also had a chronic history of intermittent fever, facial rash and joint pain.
Doctors diagnosed him with hyperinsulinism, which refers to excess insulin in the bloodstream, and he was started on medical treatment.
He suffered a seizure a week later and was later hospitalised on numerous occasions.
On July 1, 2019, during a school trip to the zoo, the year head teacher of the boy’s primary school told the woman that her son’s blood sugar level was in the normal range as he had just taken a test.
Insisting on meeting him, she went to the zoo, where she gave the boy an injection.
When he was reviewed at NUH the next day, she told the doctor that he had a seizure during the trip and that he was shaking uncontrollably.
Yet, when the hospital asked the teacher for her version of events, she said that the boy had been well.
The woman had also told the teacher that the boy had multiple conditions that he did not have, such as leukaemia, an eye tumour and Kawasaki disease, a syndrome that results in a fever.
A social worker was alerted to resolve the inconsistencies in the accounts.
She last injected the boy on July 15, 2019, just before he was admitted to NUH for his blood sugar level to be monitored.
When the boy told a therapist about his mother’s acts, hospital staff members confronted her and she confessed to her crimes.
Suffered from depression, other mental disorders
The woman was assessed at the Institute of Mental Health four times after her arrest.
Forensic psychiatrist Derrick Yeo stated in a report that she had major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from the sexual abuse.
She reported being raped by her late father, too, but prosecutors said this was not borne out by investigations.
She also displayed strong antisocial personality traits that pointed to Munchausen syndrome by proxy — a psychological disorder where someone seeks sympathy, affection and recognition for their devotion to their children by harming them.
Dr Yeo noted that she was “always strangely very calm” despite her son’s condition continually worsening.
These mental disorders had a substantial contributory link to her crimes and impaired her mental responsibility for her acts, Dr Yeo added.
She has since been put on medication and has improved.
In an updated report last year, Dr Yeo maintained that she remains an unreliable and ineffective mother because she had “continued her litany of lies” to a prison officer, counsellor and others.
She also continued lying that her son was her brother’s child to gain sympathy, and “remains still a compulsive liar who finds it convenient to tell fibs and lies to suit her needs”.
Dr Yeo advised that she should remain in a structured environment, such as a shelter or halfway house, after completing her jail sentence.
The prosecution sought six years’ jail, while the woman’s lawyers Sadhana Rai and Ng Pei Qi from the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme asked for four years.
Ng said that her client’s untreated trauma was so deeply rooted that she saw her brother’s face in her son: “She is a slave to her (mental disorders) and feels guilty about her actions.”
To this, DPP Singh replied: “Depression, even if severe, cannot be a licence to kill others.”
Offenders who cause hurt by administering poison can be jailed for up to 10 years and fined. As the woman’s single charge was framed to include multiple offences, she could have been imprisoned for up to 20 years.
The offence carries the possibility of caning, but women cannot be caned under the law. — TODAY
