DUBAI // A woman who beat her four-year-old stepdaughter and made her eat her own vomit eventually assaulted her so severely that she died.
O A, 24, had denied causing the death of a child at Dubai Criminal Court last month and claimed that Maya Raja had fallen from her bicycle on January 30. But on Wednesday the Jordanian woman was jailed for 10 years. She started screaming and crying hysterically when she heard the sentence.
The court heard that a dentist neighbour believed the injuries were not consistent with a fall from a bike. Several other witnesses said that the stepmother would regularly beat her husband’s three children.
Syrian dentist G K said: “I found she suffered some bruises on the head but with no fracture in the skull. I could see that the child had suffered injuries other than those on the head and I didn’t think they were because of the fall.
“Her lips were blue and her skin turned yellow, her body was very cold, so I asked her stepmother to take her to the nearest hospital.”
The stepmother called her husband, R S, and got his permission to take Maya to a hospital.
The husband then called his former wife, Maya’s mother, telling her to go to the NMC hospital to see her daughter.
“R S called me and informed me that my daughter was at the hospital, so I went there and, when I arrived, she was already dead,” said Maya’s mother, A J, 36, who is a nurse. “They told me she had fallen off her bike, but I suspected O A because my daughters, including Maya, had informed me before that she often beat them, especially Maya.”
The family’s Ethiopian maid, 24-year-old E E, testified that she had worked for the family for four years and, ever since O A had joined them, she had treated her husband’s daughters badly.
“She constantly beat them up for the slightest reasons and would have them eat on the floor. But when the father came, she would not do any of that,” the maid said.
“She used to feed Maya large quantities of food very quickly, forcing her to swallow it until the poor kid vomited, then she would force her to eat what she had just vomited.”
The maid, who left the family four months after the stepmother arrived in the house, said that O A hated Maya the most because “she looked very much like her mother and the father loved her the most and had her sleep in his lap often”. The maid said: “Maya’s sister, R, had told me that O A often bit Maya, and when I asked her to inform her father, she was afraid because the couple had many disputes and often fought.”
Maya’s 10-year-old sister, R M, told prosecutors that her stepmother had often taken her sister to give her a bath but she could hear Maya’s loud screams and then she would see signs of assault on her body.
“On the day of the incident I was playing outside and, for the first time, I saw O A carrying my sister and she put her on the bike, although it was broken,” said the 10-year-old.
“Then Maya fell, but her head did not bang the wall and O A could have prevented the fall but she did not. She then took Maya inside and put some ice on her head but when her colour changed, O A asked me to call for a female neighbour, who then called the dentist.”
Forensic expert M A, 28, said a bike fall could not have caused the multiple bruises and injuries the child had, especially those to the abdomen and back.
He also said that the child had several scratches and bruises on the right shoulder, neck and back, as a result of slapping or hitting. Maya also had signs of a pinch on her left ear and bite on the left arm, he said. “A test on the bite showed possible matching with the defendant’s teeth,” said the expert.
The stepmother will be deported after completing her jail term.
The verdict remains subject to appeal within 15 days.
salamir@thenational.ae
