Filipino domestic helper in HK found guilty of assaulting paralyzed old man

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A Filipino domestic helper in Hong Kong who was earlier accused of giving her employer’s husband feces to eat has been found guilty of common assault.

The domestic helper, known only as 39-year-old Ivy B.R., was sentenced to four months in prison by Eastern Deputy Magistrate Selma Masood, as per Hong Kong News on March 7.

The sentence comes after a CCTV video showed Ivy slapping her 60-year-old ward’s left thigh. She also hit his right hand with a chair, pulled his penis and shoved his right hand, which had feces, to his mouth.

“Doing that to a bed-ridden elderly man is not human nature,” Judge Masood was quoted as saying. “Tiredness, frustration or exhaustion is not an excuse and it is wrong to vent on an elderly, bed-ridden man.”

The assault happened last June 2018 in an apartment in King’s Road, as per the report. Ivy was hired in 2017 to take care of her employer’s husband, whose left side of the body was rendered paralyzed following a stroke. 

The husband later on complained to his wife, when he could still talk, that Ivy bullied him and fed him feces. The wife eventually called the police upon watching the CCTV footage. Her husband died last August 2018.

Ivy’s lawyer has since asked for a suspended jail sentence. The lawyer reasoned that Ivy had not used strong force against her ward and he did not sustain any “notable injury,” save for the red mark on his penis.

Ivy came to Hong Kong to work as a domestic helper in 2008. She has an Indian husband who is an asylum-seeker, and a son who lives in the Philippines, as per report. Cody Cepeda/JB

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