On Wednesday, June 19, a claimed spiritual leader in Singapore was sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison. This is after she duped her followers into giving her more than $7 million and forced some of them to eat human faeces.
Woo May Hoe, who claimed to be a ‘deity’ and had approximately 30 followers, pleaded guilty in May to three counts of assault and two cheating charges. During the sentencing hearing, 45 further charges were considered. According to the reports, the 54-year-old Singaporean oversaw a group that believed in spiritual leader Sri Sakthi Narayani Amma. Amma’s identity was not disclosed in court.
She promised her supporters that the money would go to Amma’s community in India. However, Woo kept the money to herself from 2012 to 2020. In previous hearings, Deputy Public Prosecutor Grace Chua informed the court that many of Woo’s followers and relatives were suffering from terrible medical ailments.
According to Woo, her followers needed to eliminate their “bad karma” and enhance their “good karma” to improve their health and that of their loved ones. She informed them that they might do so by making contributions to Amma’s community in India.
She also directed people to engage in acts of “worship” by purchasing houses, condominium units, and automobiles, all of which she utilized for her own gain. Woo also directed roughly one-third of her followers to move in with her. They had to serve her full-time and meet all of her demands, including performing housework.
According to DPP Chua, Woo punished followers who displeased her by striking them with various objects such as paint brushes and canes, as well as “stabbing them with scissors, using pliers to pull out their teeth, forcing them to consume human feces, and making them jump off a height.”
Among those Woo punished was a 43-year-old woman, who was identified in court documents as V2. Woo became enraged with her in 2019 regarding an unexplained topic and took a bundle of five canes, repeatedly beating V2 in the head and face. She then instructed V2 to wash an injured eye with “holy water” and look straight at the sun.
The victim did as instructed and did not seek emergency medical assistance, as Woo had forbidden her from doing so. V2 now requires lifelong monitoring for suspected glaucoma or damage to the optic nerve that connects the eye to the brain.
Woo became unhappy with V2 in October 2019 after discovering that the latter had borrowed $100 from an associate without informing her.
She instructed V2 to jump from the second floor of a building to the first floor. The victim did as she was advised and fractured both ankles. Between March and April 2020, Woo discovered that V2 had visited her mother without her knowledge.
Woo then instructed another follower, identified as V3, to use pliers to remove three of V2’s teeth. V3 followed the instructions out of fear of being punished the same way.
Separately, Woo directed numerous additional followers to consume human excrement. She was jailed in 2020 after several followers filed police reports against her. According to the DPP, Woo was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the offense. However, an Institute of Mental Health specialist discovered no connection between Woo’s mental health and her cheating offenses.
Between 2012 and 2020, she directly conned her followers out of $7 million (US$5.2 million). She duped them into taking out an additional $6.6 million in loans from financial institutions. She has since paid a reparation of $675,000.
