A Filipino maid was sentenced to two-and-a-half months in prison on July 21 for assaulting the “unruly” four-year-old son of jailed business tycoon Carson Yeung a year ago.Rochelle Lintag Dreck, 32, wiped away tears as she was sentenced by Eastern Court's Principal Magistrate Bina Chainrai. exactly a week after she pleaded guilty to five counts of common assault.
Dreck was sentenced to two months and two weeks in jail on each of the five charges, to be served concurrently.
It was far more lenient than the six-month prison term imposed on 41-year-old Carmella Sotto, on July 18 by another Eastern Court magistrate for slapping an 18-month-old baby girl on June 3.
Chainrai imposed the sentence after hearing from the prosecution that there were no medical and psychological reports because the assaults happened more than a year ago.
The prosecution also said the victim had suffered no permanent injuries, and submitted three photographs of the boy to the magistrate.
The magistrate had delayed the sentencing to wait for the psychological and medical reports on the victim, and a psychological report on Dreck.
Dreck’s counsel from the Duty Lawyer Scheme begged Chainrai for leniency, saying the boy had been naughty and that the maid herself had three children who had lost financial support since her arrest last year.
The helper admitted to assaulting the boy in the kitchen of Yeung’s house on Baker Road in Mid-Levels, at the Convention Plaza Apartments on Harbour Road in Wan Chai, and at Canossa Hospital on Old Peak Road in 2016.
Dreck was hired by Yeung in 2010, six years before the former chairman of the Birmingham Football Club was returned to jail after losing his appeal against a six-year jail sentence in 2014 for money laundering.
The attacks took place between Mar 9 and Apr 15, 2016, when the boy’s mother was in Shenzhen attending to her business and returning home on weekends, leaving the boy in the care of the two helpers.
In early 2016, Mrs Yeung reportedly noticed wounds on the boy but did not ask what caused them.
In May the same year, she again saw injuries on her son’s ears and asked the maids about them.
One of the helpers showed her videos she had taken of Dreck’s attacks on the boy, and the mother immediately called the police. In the videos, Dreck was seen slapping the boy, hitting his hands with a comb, and poking his lip and nose, causing nosebleed.
