SINGAPORE: A 26-year-old Indonesian maid was reportedly raped by a neighbor, then slashed with a knife and thrown from a second-storey flat in Singapore, media reports said on Tuesday. The maid somehow managed to survive the September 2009 attack despite serious injuries and the country's High Court is now hearing the case, the Straits Times daily newspaper reported. The identities of the victim and the accused, a 44-year-old former security guard, were not published on court orders. According to sources in the court, speaking to Bikyamasr.com on condition of anonymity, the incident began when the young maid was attempting to reach a circuit box outside the flat she worked in. The accused then grabbed and threw her into an empty flat nearby, cut her with a pair of scissors, raped her and attempted to strangle the woman before throwing her from the window. Police found the woman lying at the foot of her housing block, seriously injured but alive. If convicted of the charges which include attempted murder and aggravated rape, the accused could face life imprisonment and up to 24 strokes of the cane. According to local government statistics, more than 200,000 women, mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia, work as maids in wealthy Singapore. The case has left many rights workers angered that this sort of thing can even happen. “I believe the police and the government have a duty to all people here to protect them and ensure they are getting full protection by their sponsors and others around them,” the rights worker, also a witness in the case, told Bikyamasr.com. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/cDSIy Tags: Indonesia, Maid, Rape, Singapore Section: East Asia, Human Rights, Latest News, Women
