A 39-year-old Filipina was sentenced to six months in jail at the Sha Tin Magistrates’ Court on Friday for deliberately leaving a bottle of bleach solution in the bathroom that her employer used to bath a six-month-old baby girl.
Merlyn Anao Ando was convicted on one count of ill-treatment by those in charge of child or young person, the Sing Tao Daily reported. Deputy magistrate Jerry Chung Ming-shing said the prosecution had proved beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant had left the bleach solution, which was placed in an empty baby gel bottle, in the bathroom to cause harm to the baby.
Chung said an aggravating factor was that the defendant did not stop her employer from bathing the baby, knowing the employer used the baby gel bottle containing the bleach solution.
The defendant only told the mother the bottle contained bleach solution after the baby girl, who was crying, was lifted out of the bath. The baby bore no signs of injury apart from redness on her arm and lower part of her body after being sent to a hospital.
The incident happened in an apartment in Fo Tan in the New Territories on August 13 last year, one day before Ando was due to leave after she had resigned. In her testimony, Ando said she used the empty blue baby gel plastic bottle to mix the Chlorox and water solution for cleaning the bathroom.
She said she normally kept the bottle in the kitchen and on August 13 she used it to clean the bathtub when ordered to take care of the eldest child, a 4-year-old boy.
Asked if an appeal was being considered, the defendant’s lawyer said he was thinking about it, but the Filipina had accepted the verdict, knowing she would be out soon, sunwebhk.com reported.
Read: Filipino maid accused of mixing bleach into baby’s bath gel