A 27-year-old domestic helper from Myanmar gave birth to a girl in the bathroom of her employers’ home and abandoned her on the ledge of the external unit of an air conditioner outside the bathroom’s window on Thursday, according to the Judiciary Police (PJ).
A PJ spokesperson announced the case during a regular press conference on Friday.
The domestic helper started to work in her employers’ home in Rua de Ferreira do Amaral in March this year. The employers – a married couple – told the police that they did not know that the maid had been pregnant as she is plump, according to the spokesperson.
At 8 p.m. on Thursday, the domestic helper was having dinner with the couple in their home, during which the maid told her employers that she was suffering from dysmenorrhoea (painful menstruation) and went to the bathroom, the spokesperson said.
The domestic helper was still in the bathroom after 10 minutes. Worried about her maid, the female employer entered the bathroom and found that she was lying unconscious on the floor in a pool of blood, the spokesperson said, adding that the couple then reported the situation to the police.
Paramedics arrived at the scene and took the maid to the nearby public Conde de Sao Januario Hospital Centre. A doctor confirmed that she had been pregnant but was unable to verify whether she had carried out a self-induced abortion, the spokesperson said.
Public Security Police (PSP) officers went to the couple’s home to investigate the case but did not find anything suspicious in the flat. They transferred the case to the Judiciary Police at 1 a.m. on Friday for further investigation. PJ officers didn’t find anything suspicious in the flat either, the spokesperson said.
After the couple arranged the domestic helper’s hospitalisation, they returned to their home in the early hours of Friday. At 4 a.m., when the female employer went into the bathroom to clean up the blood on the floor, she heard weak cries that appeared to be from a baby, the spokesperson said. She opened the window to look outside to find the source of the cries.
According to the spokesperson, the female employer discovered a female newborn still attached to the placenta wrapped in a white towel lying on the ledge of the external unit of an air conditioner.
She immediately called the police. The newborn was rushed to the public hospital for emergency treatment, the spokesperson said, adding that the baby was not in a life-threatening condition.
At the time of Friday’s press conference, PJ officers had not yet been able to take a statement from the domestic helper as she was still being treated in the hospital.
PJ officers classified the case as abandonment, based on Article 135 of the Macau Penal Code, according to which the offender faces a prison term of between one and five years if he or she has abandoned a person who cannot look after him or herself due to their age, physical disability or illness – provided that the offender had the duty to protect or look after the abandoned person.
The outdoor temperature at the time the baby was lying on the air-con ledge was just about 10 degrees Celsius. The baby reportedly endured the cold weather for about eight hours.
