Maid pleads guilty to making false rape accusation

A 32-year-old Indonesian domestic worker pleaded guilty at a Singapore court on Tuesday to falsely accusing her employer’s 70-year-old father-in-law of rape and indecent assault.

Dina Melina had been hired by the daughter-in-law of a Singaporean man named Abu Bakar in late 2013, Yahoo News Singapore reported. In December 2016, the maid asked the man, who did not live in the employer’s home but was a visitor there, for a loan, and Bakar lent her S$1,000 (US$757).

As of March the following year, as she was still unable to repay the money, Melina asked if she could do him any favor in lieu of payment. The elderly man thus asked for sex, and the maid agreed.

The pair had sexual intercourse in April 2017. Afterward she lied to the man about having pain in her vagina. Bakar lent her S$1,000 for a medical checkup.

Failing to repay the loan again, Melina agreed to let Bakar touch her breast on May 4, 2017.

Meanwhile, the maid was under the impression she was being underpaid by her employer, and decided to extort money from her boss’s father-in-law.

Melina sent text messages in the name of the daughter-in-law, claiming that she knew of the secret sexual relationship between the man and the maid and threatened to make it public unless Bakar gave her S$3,000. Bakar refused to give her any money, as he knew it was a ruse.

Infuriated, Melina lodged a report to the police, alleging that she had been sexually and indecently assaulted by Bakar on two occasions. The police recorded six statements from her from June to November 2017 and two statements from Bakar in July the same year.

On September 19, 2017, both Melina and Bakar underwent polygraph tests. She then admitted to the police that she had falsely accused Bakar after the release of the results of her lie-detector test.

Melina pleaded guilty to making false reports. She told the court that she regretted her actions and asked for leniency.

On Wednesday, she was jailed for three months for the charge.

For giving false information to a public servant, the offender could face a jail term of up to a year, and/or a maximum fine of S$5,000 on each count.