SOURCE: The New Paper

On July 9, Feizal Abu Bakar, 28, was jailed for 18 months for assaulting her, breaching a Personal Protection Order (PPO)) and attacking his neighbour with a samurai sword.

Madam Ina (not her real name), 34, told The New Paper that there was no love, no trust and very little hope of saving their marriage. Their relationship – abusive and violent – was doomed from the start. They got married after a three-month courtship. What followed was a union riddled with fights, shouting matches and her making secretive, hasty trips back to Indonesia. He even assaulted her when she was pregnant.

Even so, she wants to give her husband another chance when he gets out of jail – mainly because she fears she may not get custody of their three-year-old son if they break up. She is an Indonesian citizen, while her son is a Singaporean, like his father. Madam Ina married Feizal in 2008 after they met while he was on holiday in Batam.

Speaking in Bahasa Indonesia, she said:

“I asked for a $10,000 dowry, for the ceremony to be held at a five-star hotel, and for another ceremony in Batam for my family and friends.”

She said she did this to scare Feizal off in case he wasn’t serious about marrying her. To her surprise, he splurged on the wedding, even buying her a gown instead of renting it. The marriage was initially a happy one, Madam Ina said, until the credit card bills came and loan sharks started harassing them. Paint was splashed on the front door and their unit number was scrawled on walls. The couple fought often, said Madam Ina.

She said:

“On the third day after our marriage, he hit me.

"I started losing trust in him. I wasn’t pregnant yet and I wanted to give him time to change.

“But when I realised that I really couldn’t trust him any more, I found out that I was pregnant.”

Madam Ina said Feizal dotes on their son. She claimed that early into her pregnancy, Feizal once beat and verbally abused her for six hours, from noon to 6pm. She couldn’t remember why he blew his top. After the fight, Madam Ina left for Batam on the earliest ferry she could board. She then flew home to Sulawesi in Indonesia.

She returned to Singapore after Feizal went to her home to apologise to her father, even kissing his feet to seek forgiveness. This would become the pattern every time he abused her.

She applied for a PPO against Feizal and was issued one on Nov 11 last year. According to court documents, Feizal breached the PPO and assaulted Madam Ina on Jan 4 this year.

She suffered a bruise on her right wrist and an abrasion on her right shoulder. When asked if Feizal had done anything nice for her, she said:

“When I spoke to him after his sentencing, he apologised and asked me to please take care of our son and his father.

“I was crying even before the sentence was read out. My father-in-law scolded me. He said Feizal asked for it.

“Feizal always apologised and asked for forgiveness after hitting me. And I knew, after a while, that his apologies were a lie.

“But I’ve come back because of my son. I cannot bear to be away from him. He is everything I have.”

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