Miscarriage No 2

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HE was supposed to have received five strokes of the cane. But the 20-year-old allegedly got three extra strokes when he was thrown into jail for vandalism and moneylending.

Now, his mother is claiming that he is suffering from stress and trauma. And she wants compensation for the alleged mistake.

Madam Ho Gee Lin, 52, claimed that despite his pleas to the prison officers that they had made an error, they proceeded to cane him eight times.

He was sentenced in February to nine months' jail and five strokes of the cane.

While at the Queenstown Remand Prison, he discovered from his prisoner's identification card that he was to receive eight strokes instead of the five imposed by the court.

When he was sent to Admiralty West Prison a week later, he was given another identification card. It said the same thing.

He informed two prison officers separately, but they would not listen to him, his mother claimed yesterday.

Her account of what happened could not be verified because the authorities could not comment by press time.

Madam Ho said one of the officers asked him if he could read English and told him to read his sentence printed out on the card out loud. Her son did that.

Still, he told his mother that the officer insisted there was no mistake in the sentence.

On the morning of 29 Mar, the day he was scheduled to be caned, Madam Ho and her 32-year-old daughter, visited him.

'He told me about the eight strokes of the cane,' she said. 'We were surprised.'

After they left the prison at about 10.30am, Madam Ho claimed her daughter called the investigating officer in charge of her son's case.

He told them to check with the court that passed the sentence and gave them the number, Madam Ho said.

Her daughter then called the court.

'A man told her that my son should be given five strokes, not eight. He said he would call the prison to clarify.'

But the family did not hear from the court employee again as they had forgotten to leave their contact number, Madam Ho said.

The family assumed the matter had been settled, she added.

When they visited him two weeks later, he told them he had been caned eight times.

'My son said he nearly fainted from the caning. He was so scared he didn't even scream, but just kept on shivering.'

But Madam Ho said her son was asked to put his thumbprint on a document before the caning.

She said they do not know what was on the document. So why didn't he read it before he put his thumbprint on it?

ENGLISH VERY POOR

Madam Ho said: 'His English is very poor because he dropped out of school after Sec 1. Also, he had already complained to the same prison officer (overseeing the caning) about the matter before and nothing was done.'

On 21 May, nearly three months before he was due to be freed from Admiralty West Prison, Madam Ho said he was allowed to go on home detention. He was supposed to be freed on 7 Aug.

On 30 May, Madam Ho wrote to the prison authorities.

Five days later, she met a lawyer from the Attorney-General's Chambers at the Selarang DRC. She claimed the AGC offered her apologies and monetary compensation, which she declined to disclose.

In early June, on the advice of her ex-husband, Madam Ho hired lawyer Joseph Chen to look into taking legal action.

Madam Ho claimed her son, the youngest of three siblings, was a very different person after the caning.

'He used to be active, but since he returned, he lost sleep, became forgetful and stressed. He even started seeing and hearing things.'

In early June, Madam Ho said she took her son to see a psychiatrist. He was also warded at Adam Road Hospital for four days.

She showed us the report, from a private psychiatrist. It said that the extra strokes caused stress and trauma to Madam Ho's son.

On her claims that the AGC offered her compensation, she said: 'I rejected it because my hospital bills came up to a few thousand dollars. And my son's future is unknown.

'I want to sue not just because of the money, but because I want justice for my son.

'He told the prison officers on the first day he was jailed that he wasn't supposed to get eight strokes.

'He was to be caned only two weeks later, so why didn't they use the time to check?

'He's still so young. I don't know how long he'll take to recover.'