SHE has a husband and two children who love and care for her. But now the family's future is in the balance.
Vietnamese woman Tran Thi Gai holding her third husband The Kuan Meng's hands. Picture: NG XINYAO
Vietnamese national Tran Thi Gai, 29, was sentenced to jail for 11 weeks yesterday after her past caught up with her.
And her Singaporean husband, sales executive The Kuan Meng, 36, is also facing charges of aiding and abetting some of her crimes. His trial is pending.
The is Tran's third husband, and that's where her problem lay. She never divorced her two previous husbands, both Singaporeans, before marrying The.
And in committing bigamy, the Vietnamese also broke immigration laws, including entering Singapore using a fake passport.
In an interview with The New Paper before her appearance yesterday, Tran spoke of her regrets.
As tears filled her eyes, she said: 'I have too many regrets... My biggest regret is that I did something wrong and I dragged my husband and my kids into it.'
And she's worried for what her family must now go through because of her past follies.
She said she had a hard time saying goodbye to her two sons, aged 18 months and 2-1/2 years, before going to court.
'I told them that I'll be going to Vietnam to buy things. They kept asking me not to leave them.'
Speaking in halting Mandarin, she added: 'Sometimes at night, when I look at my husband and my kids who are sleeping, I shed silent tears. They mean the world tome.
'I keep wondering what's going to happen to them when I go to jail.'
But Tran brought all these upon herself, although her defence lawyer portrayed her as a naive victim of circumstances in pleading for leniency.
Mr Irving Choh of Rajah & Tann told the court: 'It's not that (Tran) was committing immoral acts to earn a living.
'She is a victim of her naivety and ignorance of the law, and is captive of the chains of her circumstances.'
He added that she has been a dutiful wife and mother and has been filial to The's elderly parents, whom she accompanies to the hospital for treatment and physiotherapy.
He said when she found out she was pregnant after being charged, she aborted the baby.
Yesterday, Tran pleaded guilty to four immigration charges, a charge of false declaration and a count of bigamy. Another charge of bigamy was taken into consideration, along with other immigration counts.
Of her bigamy charge, Mr Choh said: 'Their marriage was one of true love for each other and concern that their child would be illegitimate.'
Of her immigration offences, he said: 'The sole reason why she was minded to break the law in these offences was for the sake of her first-born.... while it is no excuse for her to break the law repeatedly, she did what she did only because it would enable her to look after her children.'
Mr Choh concluded: 'Any incarceration period will cause hardship to her two young children. She has moved on, she deserves a second chance.'
After an hour's recess to consider the case, District Judge Eddy Tham sentenced Tran to a total of 11 weeks' jail for all her offences.
For lying in her social visit pass, she faced a maximum sentence of a year's jail and $4,000 fine. For bigamy, she could have been jailed up to seven years andfined.
The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) discovered her offences and her various identities when processing her application for permanent residency.
Tran first came to Singapore in early 2001, as a Cambodian, under the name of Ly Da.
She said she came to buy apparel for her father's business in Cambodia.
She met Mr Liong Tian Yong and they registered their marriage in August that year.
About half a year later, she returned to Cambodia because of her parents' marital problems.
She surrendered her citizenship, moved to Vietnam and lost touch with Mr Liong.
She applied for Vietnamese travel documents, but decided it took too long.
FAKE PASSPORT
So Tran acquired a fake passport under the name of Nguyen Thi Thu Van and came to Singapore in early 2003.
In May 2003, after a whirlwind romance, she married Mr Kelvin Quek.
But their marriage faced problems due to cultural differences. They quarrelled and both said they wanted a divorce.
It was around that time that she got to know The, an acquaintance of Mr Quek.
They soon developed feelings for each other, she said.
She returned to Vietnam in late 2003 after her second marriage broke down.
Then, in May 2004, she found out she was expecting The's child and returned to Singapore using a new Vietnam passport with her current identity.
Following that, every time she applied to extend her social visit pass to stay in Singapore, she falsely declared that she had never previously entered Singapore using a different passport or name.
She also made a flase declaration that she was still single and did not know of any legal impediment to the marriage when she re-married.
She claimed she had come back to Singapore for the sake of The and their unborn child.
'I finally met a good, sincere man who loves me and I love him.'
They got married as soon as his divorce from his former wife was finalised.
But she claimed she didn't know her own previous marriages have not been dissolved before the law.
'I'm a foreigner and I can't speak English. When (my first husband) said he wanted a divorce, I thought he would have taken care of it.'
She said she wed The in a hurry as she was already pregnant with their first child.
'At that time, I was not thinking. I just wanted my kids to have a father and mother. I didn't consider other things.'
But why lie to the immigration authorities?
'My husband and my children needed me. I did it because of them.'
She had to renew her visit pass every 14 or 30 days and is considered to have committed the same offence several times.
The is his family's sole breadwinner while Tran stayed home to look after his parents and their children.
The's father, 65, is an amputee, while his mother suffers from chronic knee problems.
Tran, who claims to come from a respectable family in Vietnam that deals in real estate, said: 'My parents are also upset. They never would have imagined that their daughter could go so wrong in a strange country.'
She said: 'I was young, I didn't think things through properly, and that's why I ended up breaking the law.'
Source:
http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg
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