What Happened To The “Sick Mother” & The Baby Girl She Beat Up?

Days after the viral spread of an old YouTube video, there’s still interest in the consequences for a violent mother, and whether her physically-abused baby is doing okay.

On Wednesday, a video entitled “SICK MOTHER BEATING UP 8 MONTH OLD BABY!” from last year spread through social media with people re-posting for the purpose of bringing the woman to justice. People worked out that she lived in Malaysia and contacted local authorities, who quickly responded that the matter had been concluded May 2011 with the abuser’s arrest and imprisonment.

The Royal Malaysia Police released a Facebook statement about then video: “With the spread of a child abuse video through social media, the police have received nearly 300 complaints and comments from the public… about the fate of the baby. For your information, the case was reported in IPD Petaling Jaya on May 29, 2011, and arrests were made on the same day. The perpetrator is the biological mother of the abused baby girl. The mother is currently serving a prison sentence of 18-months commencing on the date of arrest under Section 31 (1) Children Act 2001.”

And today, CNN.com offers some clarifications about the video in order to dispel the misinformation and to answer people’s questions.

The unnamed woman (authorities declined to reveal her name) is an unmarried 18-year-old, according to Petaling Jaya’s chief of police, Arjunaidi Mohamed, who denies rumours the woman was raped before committing the crime although Mohamed attributes the behaviour to “frustration.” And, not that it really matters, but the baby was 10-months-old at the time, not eight-months-old (as claimed in the original video’s title).

So, how did the abuse video come about? CNN reports that a friend of the mother witnessed a different beating, became concerned, and so filmed a subsequent attack and took the evidence to the police. As a result, the attacker was arrested and imprisoned for child abuse.

And how’s the baby girl doing? The baby has been placed with a foster family and is “doing very well” according to the deputy director of the children division of the Social Welfare Department, Fatimah Zuraidah Salleh, who notes welfare officials are doing monthly checks with the foster family who are not related to or connected to the biological family.

A court will “rigorously” assess, upon the imprisoned woman’s release in November 2012, whether the mother can have her baby back.