Convicted helper abuser jailed again for illegally hiring domestic worker to look after 40 cats
David Sun
The Straits Times
Aug 12, 2026
A woman who was previously jailed for domestic worker abuse, which included pulling out the helper’s teeth with pliers, should not have been able to hire another helper.
But Maselly Ab Aziz, 55, conspired with her friend to lie to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) so she could illegally hire a helper under the friend’s name.
The helper took care of 40 cats and performed general chores at Maselly’s three-storey house for almost five months. For about two months, the helper did not know Maselly was not her official employer.
On Aug 12, Maselly was jailed for seven weeks after pleading guilty to one charge under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act.
Her friend, Nur Afidah Abdul Gafar, 39, was sentenced to three weeks’ jail in July 2025 for her role in the case.
The court heard that Maselly has a long history of offences involving the employment of domestic workers.
In 2005, she employed a domestic helper without a work permit and was fined.
In 2007, she and her family had abused an Indonesian helper for months, pouring wax and boiling water on her, assaulting her with a metal rod and pulling out two of her front teeth with pliers.
The helper finally escaped by jumping out the kitchen window from the second-storey flat and running to a nearby hotel to seek help from a security guard.
Maselly was convicted of abuse in 2009, jailed for three years and banned from employing domestic workers.
But in December 2023, she approached a domestic worker agency to employ one of its workers.
Two work permit applications were submitted under Maselly’s husband’s name, but they were rejected.
Maselly then approached Afidah, her close friend of over a decade, conspiring with her to make the application under Afidah’s name and declaring that the helper would be employed by Afidah in Ang Mo Kio.
In January 2024, Maselly took the helper from the agency to her home in Sembawang.
The helper thought Maselly was her official employer, as it was Maselly who had interviewed her, fetched her from the agency and paid her salary. She had no clue who Afidah was.
Maselly’s husband told the helper in March 2024 that her official employer was not Maselly.
But she continued working there – even after her work permit was cancelled due to a levy default – until she was found at the house during an MOM inspection in June that year.
The prosecution said this was not the first attempt by Maselly to sidestep MOM’s enforcement actions.
In 2013, she was convicted of illegally employing another domestic worker, and jailed for two months and fined.
The year before that, her daughter, who was also jailed for the abuse in 2007, said in an interview that the family had learnt their lesson and were moving on to be “better people”.
For conspiring to lie to MOM in the work pass application, Maselly and Afidah could have each been jailed for up to two years and fined $20,000.
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