Miss Sri Hartuti Rokiman, 25, has been taking shelter at the Indonesian Embassy since she was abused three years ago. Her employer, finance officer Sally Ang, had pinched her and drawn on her face with marker pens. -- ST PHOTO: NG SOR LUAN When her employer took marker pens and drew lines on her face three years ago, Miss Sri Hartuti Rokiman stood frozen in stunned silence.
'I just thought it was my mistake,' recalled the 25-year-old Indonesian maid.
It was punishment for not vacuuming the bedroom properly.
Later, Miss Sri Hartuti ran to the toilet to clean her face. She had to scrub hard with soap before the ink came off. By then, her face had become red and swollen.
The humiliation of the act finally sank in later that night, when she locked herself in her room and cried.
'I decided I could not take it anymore,' she told The Sunday Times last week.
The next day, at 5am, while washing her employer's car on the front porch, she made a dash for freedom.
With $30 in her pocket, she took a cab near her employer's Eastwood Place house off Bedok Road to a police station.
There, she recounted how her employer, Sally Ang Poh Hoon, 44, a finance officer, had hurt her the day before and on four other occasions over a two-month period in 2005.
The case made front-page news two weeks ago when Ang was jailed three weeks and fined $1,500 for abusing the maid.
It was a tragedy in the making from Day One.
On her first day of work, Miss Sri Hartuti, a first-time maid in Singapore, was scolded for not hanging clothes the way Ang had wanted it done.
Over time, the scoldings escalated. Ang often called the maid 'stupid'. Several times, she also called her babi, which means 'pig' in Malay and is an offensive term to Muslims.
Miss Sri Hartuti said Ang also threatened to deduct her salary for every mistake she made.
Twice, Ang pinched her eyelids as she was disappointed with her work.
On another occasion, she poked the maid's forehead for not properly closing the front door. It left a scratch on her forehead.
'I was angry but I could not run away. I still had an eight-month loan to pay.'
Miss Sri Hartuti jotted down the abuses that she endured in a notebook she had brought from Indonesia, unknown to her employer.
A neighbour and her maid also helped her to take pictures of her scratches and bruises.
Miss Sri Hartuti, who was unemployed before she came to Singapore from a village in Central Java, said she had asked to return home on Day One, but her employer refused. She ended up working six months for Ang.
'My neighbours who had worked in Singapore told me that their employers are very good to them. Who would have thought this would happen?' she said.
But there is some relief from the case. Last week, after Ang's sentencing, she received compensation of $4,000 from her former employer. There was also a letter of apology from her.
'She said she regretted her actions. She did not know why she did them,' said the maid. She has not met her former employer since she ran away.
While waiting for the case to be closed in the last three years, she took shelter at her employment agency and later, at the Indonesian Embassy.
She is expected to leave Singapore at the end of this month.
'I'm happy. I just want to go home,' she said.
Asked if she has forgiven Ang, she said: 'I've already forgiven her. But it is hard to forget what had happened.'
Jamie Ee Wen Wei