Months before she suffered sustained torture by her abusers, Megan Khung suddenly piped up during a meal with her grandmother.
The four-year-old had said in her usual clear Mandarin: “I don’t want to go back to that pretty house.”
She did not elaborate, but when her grandmother, Madam Chua, 68, asked if the “pretty house” was where Megan’s mother, Foo Li Ping, and the woman’s boyfriend, Wong Shi Xiang, lived, the girl said yes.
The couple had rented a condo at Suites @ Guillemard in Paya Lebar.
Madam Chua promised her: “Don’t be scared. Ah Ma is here. I’ll protect you.”
Seated at the same dining table where they had that conversation, now with an empty chair beside her, the elderly woman’s eyes welled with tears during a three-hour interview with The Straits Times on Oct 24.
“I really regret it. I couldn’t save my granddaughter,” she said, a day after a review panel released a report detailing lapses by various agencies handling Megan’s case between March 2019 and February 2020.
After the girl died on Feb 22, 2020, Madam Chua could not bear to put Megan’s pictures around her one-room rental flat and has given away most of the girl’s belongings.
The ones she still keeps, including a Winnie the Pooh bear and the girl’s pre-school progress reports, are covered in dust.
Tucked away in Madam Chua’s cupboard is a stack of Megan’s baby photos, which still made her smile as she showed them to ST.
‘I’m your precious baby’
When Megan was born in October 2015, Madam Chua took care of her for a while during Foo’s confinement.
Megan and Foo were living with Foo’s then husband, Mr Khung Wei Nan, better known as content creator “Simonboy”, before the marriage broke down in 2017.
Foo then returned to Madam Chua’s flat.
Those years were filled with simple joys. Foo took Megan to pre-school before she went to work at a remittance company, and Madam Chua, who worked as a cleaner, picked the girl up from school in the evening.
They would eat dinner bought from the nearby hawker centre, before Madam Chua ran a bath for Megan. Some days, they would watch television, with Megan seated on Madam Chua’s lap.
Madam Chua said the girl was sweet and sensible. She diligently kept coins and notes in a wafer rolls tin because she knew they needed money for meals.
Once, she tried to help with the housework by sweeping the floor with a broomstick that was taller than her.
Recalled Madam Chua: “Megan saw that I was busy with chores and quietly decided to help. She didn’t know how to use the broomstick and it broke, but I thought it was so cute.”
Madam Chua and Foo also celebrated Megan’s birthday together. The girl made them laugh when she got chocolate cake all over her mouth.
Said Madam Chua: “I didn’t feel life was difficult then. I was very happy taking care of her.”
She especially misses how Megan would cheekily tell her: “Ah Ma, I’m your precious baby.”
Changed person
But things changed when Megan lived with Foo and Wong on some weekends in early 2019.
She turned up at pre-school with bruises and marks all over her body on March 19, 2019, after missing school for a month.
Community workers from Beyond Social Services (BSS), which runs the pre-school, planned for Megan to stay overnight only at Madam Chua’s flat. But this temporary care plan was breached in September 2019, when Foo picked Megan up from school and refused to give her back.
Foo spoke to Madam Chua only via phone calls and did not say where they were living.
On one of these calls, Foo remarked: “Megan doesn’t talk much now.”
Madam Chua suspected Megan was scared, but thought things were still fine when she could hear the girl’s voice on the line. Foo cut off contact weeks later.
No one knew where Foo and Wong lived.
Court documents later revealed that between September 2019 and February 2020, Megan was slapped, punched, and hit with a water hose by Wong.
She was also made to eat discarded food from a dustbin, and suffered from heatstroke while locked inside a planter box she had to sleep in. Wong hit her until her jaw became crooked.
She eventually died after his fatal punch to her stomach. Foo, Wong and a friend burned her body in a metal barrel at Paya Ubi Industrial Park.
On Jan 17, 2020, Madam Chua made the first police report while Megan was still alive.
The review panel found that two police officers who handled this first report failed to follow processes. There were also other lapses by the Ministry of Social and Family Development’s Child Protective Service and various agencies in the handling of Megan’s case.
The matter came to light only when Madam Chua and Mr Khung made more police reports on July 20, 2020. They did not know that, by then, Megan had been dead for five months.
Madam Chua said quietly: “Megan must have felt scared when she woke up every day.”
On April 3, Foo was sentenced to 19 years’ jail, and Wong was sentenced to 30 years’ jail and 17 strokes of the cane. Their friend’s case is pending.
With her daughter now behind bars, and her granddaughter gone, Madam Chua lives alone in a quiet flat.
Seeing little girls at the bus stop near her home makes her think of Megan.
Noting that Megan’s birthday is in October, Madam Chua said wistfully: “She would have been 10 now.
“If I could see her, I would tell her, ‘Ah Ma loves you’.”
