By Tan May Ping and Ervina Mohd Jamil

YES, she did have sex with her lover in her employer's bedroom.

But she did not sexually abuse the two young children under her care, said Ms Fatimah, the maid embroiled in the case.

She questioned her employer's motive for waiting almost a year after sacking her last year before bringing up the accusations against her.

When we asked her about the claim that she allowed the boy to touch her breasts, she appeared shocked and said it was the first time she was hearing of it.

'I never showed my breasts to them,' she said last week in an interview at the Indonesian Embassy, where she is staying while investigations are going on.

'I never expected them to accuse me like this,' she said.

She had been waiting for the trial to start against her employer - who was accused of abusing her.

But one month before the hearing earlier this year, her employer, Madam Annie, levelled the new accusations against her.

Madam Annie was acquitted of abusing her but, because of the new case, Ms Fatimah has had to stay on at the embassy and cannot return to Indonesia.

Speaking in a mixture of English and Bahasa Indonesia, Ms Fatimah said: 'I want to go back to Indonesia. I thought I could go home after the trial was over but now I can't. I'm very sad.'

She claimed there was only one sexual tryst with her Bangladeshi lover.

'I'm ashamed and I regret my actions. I ask myself, why did I do all that?' she said.

But she was shocked at the allegations that she had sexually abused her employer's children.

Early last year, about a week after getting to know her, Ms Fatimah's lover turned up at Madam Annie's house at 10am, long after Madam Annie and her husband had left for work.

The couple headed straight for the master bedroom where they had sex behind closed doors.

Ms Fatimah claimed that the children were playing in their own bedroom the entire time and did not see her lover come and go, and, therefore, could not have seen them having sex.

She claimed that her lover was at her employer's home for only 15 minutes.

Two weeks after the tryst, her employer's husband caught her talking on the handphone that her lover had given her.

When he confronted her, she admitted to having a lover and that they had sex in the house.

Ms Fatimah said Madam Annie was very angry and scolded her.

She made Ms Fatimah write down everything that had happened on the day she had sex, took her to the police station and lodged a report against her.

Ms Fatimah alleged that Madam Annie hit her with her hands and a high-heeled shoe in the car while sending her back to the agent a few days later.

Her agent noticed that Ms Fatimah's nose was bleeding, and asked her about it.

When she alleged that her employer had hit her, her agent took her to lodge a police report the same day.

Ms Fatimah stayed with her agent for four months before being transferred to the embassy, where she has been staying for the past eight months.

Lost contact

She has lost contact with her lover after her sacking.

As for the jewellery in her luggage, she claimed that Madam Annie had given her a necklace, a pair of earrings and a watch as gifts before things between the two women soured.

'Ma'am said it was not mine, and told me to give them back to her. She gave them to me earlier as presents. I didn't steal,' she said.

Married three years ago, she said she came to Singapore about two years ago to earn a higher wage.

Madam Annie was her first employer, and she got along well with the family.

When she started working for them, Madam Annie taught her how to do the household chores and was 'nice' to her.

'My employer scolded me sometimes when I made mistakes, and I accepted it because I was in the wrong. But there were also times when I felt sad and just wanted to go home,' she said.

She said that her employer also often took her along on family outings.

She said she stayed at Madam Annie's mother's flat for the few days that she was away.

That was when Ms Fatimah met her lover, who worked at a construction site nearby.

He spotted her at the window of the second-storey flat and flashed his phone number to her on a piece of paper.

When they moved back to Madam Annie's flat, Ms Fatimah said she used the house phone to call and tell him where she lived.

A week later, he went to the flat.

This article was first published in The New Paper.