SUSPICIOUS RED MARKS
The therapy sessions were conducted in a bedroom at the boy’s home and would last for about 90 minutes each time.
Sometime in June 2020, the mother noticed that there were scratches on her son’s back and a red lump on his hand.
She initially brushed it aside, thinking that her son was careless but on July 28, she discovered that there were red marks on his left arm that resembled nail marks.
The discovery was made right after the boy had completed a therapy session with Amira.
Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Tan Shi Yun said that the boy’s mother then decided to set up a hidden camera in the bedroom, suspecting that her son may have been bruised during his therapy session.
After a therapy session the next day, she reviewed the recorded footage and found that Amira had hurt her son multiple times.
This included scratching and grabbing the boy’s neck, hitting his forehead and mouth, and hitting his left arm.
About a week later, the boy’s mother took him to a clinic where he was examined by Dr Leo Hamilton who discovered sustained bruising on his neck and elbow that appeared in a “fingerprint” pattern.
The medical report stated that the injuries the boy had sustained raised concerns over physical abuse, DPP Tan said.
“A VULNERABLE VICTIM”
In delivering her sentence, Principal District Judge Jill Tan noted that there was an abuse of trust as Amira was the boy’s therapist and his parents had left him in her sole care.
“Even if he was not an easy student, given his autism, you ought to have exercised more patience and gentleness with him,” the judge told Amira.
The judge added that the victim was vulnerable and non-verbal, and Amira’s acts might have gone undetected if not for the red marks and the recorded footage.
The judge noted that Amira is now 26 weeks’ pregnant but said that a jail term of three weeks would be appropriate because her condition does not outweigh the aggressive factors of the case.
For voluntarily causing hurt, Amira could have been jailed for up to three years or fined up to S$5,000 (US$3,700), or both. With the offence committed against a person below the age of 14, she could have faced twice the maximum punishment imposed by the court.