Employer says husband complained FDH gave him feces

Eastern Magistrates' Courts

A businesswoman testified in court this lunchtime (Feb. 12) that her late husband complained that their Filipino domestic worker gave him feces “to eat”.

The witness, H.S. Wong, told Eastern Deputy Magistrate Selma Masood that her 60-year-old semi-paralyzed husband, who died last year, wrote to her when he was still alive that their domestic worker, Ivy B.R., gave him his own feces “for him to eat.”

“My husband wrote down the words and showed me. I asked my maid, ‘You gave him feces to eat?’” Wong said.

“(Ivy) said: Why would I do that?” she added.

Wong, 47, said she did not take her husband’s claim seriously at the time because he had been paralyzed by a stroke in December 2016. He died in August last year.

“At the time, I was thinking he was sick. Maybe, he was in a bad mood,” she said.

Wong made the statement in the trial of Ivy, who was charged earlier with common assault and indecent assault, after she allegedly hit Wong’s bed-ridden husband with a plastic stool and touched his penis.

According to the prosecution, the alleged incident happened on the morning of June 30, 2018 inside the complainant’s flat along King’s Road in North Point.

Wong had hired Ivy in 2017 to take care of her husband who “could not eat, speak, or walk.” The left side of his body was paralyzed after his stroke.

A CCTV footage of the incident was shown in court this morning but Ivy’s lawyer said the Filipino woman had to touch the penis of Wong’s husband since she was changing his diaper and she had to clean him up.

The lawyer also said that Ivy did not maliciously hit with the plastic stool, but actually lightly hit, the right hand of Wong’s husband to remind him not to touch his feces.

Under questioning, Wong admitted that she would also lightly hit her husband’s hand when he touched his feces to remind him not to do that because he sometimes did that and spread and feces on his bed.

“When I went to bed, we had to tie his hand…If the blanket and bed is full of feces, if that happens, the entire home would smell,” Wong said.

She also admitted that sometimes Ivy would also “lightly hit” her husband’s right hand in her presence to stop him from touching his feces.

According to Hong Kong’s Crimes Ordinance, a person convicted of indecent assault faces up to 10 years of imprisonment.

On the other hand, those convicted of common assault can be imprisoned up to one year, according to the city’s Offences Against the Person Ordinance.

The trial continued as of press time this afternoon. Besides Wong, three other prosecution witnesses are expected to testify.