Perth mum who stabbed daughter’s secret boyfriend thought he was an intruder, court hears

A Parkwood mother who stabbed a 14-year-old boy moments after finding him in a bedroom with her daughter, says she thought he was an intruder and used the knife in self-defence.

Jennifer Mui Len Chin, 49, has pleaded not guilty to causing bodily harm after the boy was left with four superficial stab wounds following an evening tryst with Chin’s daughter in October 2023.

Jennifer Chin is accused of stabbing her teenage daughter’s secret boyfriend after discovering she had sneaked him into her bedroom on Tuesday night.

During the opening address in her Perth District Court trial, the prosecutor alleged Chin was watching TV at the other end of the family home when her 14-year-old daughter snuck her boyfriend of six months into the spare bedroom.

She proceeded to have sex with him, the court was told, before Chin went to investigate after she noticed the front door was open and the door to the spare room was unusually closed.

Despite trying to distract her mother in the doorway, Chin became suspicious and peered into the bedroom where she found the girl’s boyfriend half naked under the covers, prosecutors said.

“Intruder! Intruder!” she then yelled at the boy, while holding his wrists.

Chin then allegedly told her six-year-old son to “get a knife”. The boy responded by bringing back a 23 centimetre kitchen knife that Chin “held above her head”.

The teenage boy then ran out of the room with Chin’s daughter but was cornered at the front door when he tried to escape and found it locked.

Chin then stabbed the child once on each side of the chest as he faced her and then twice in the shoulder as he turned away. Bleeding, he escaped out of the house with the teenage girl in tow.

Chin’s defence lawyer Mark Andrews told the jury that she did not dispute her actions that night, but said she believed the boy was an intruder and that she was protecting her family.

Chin, a Christian woman who was born in Malaysia, and her husband who worked night shifts at Crown, did not allow their daughter to date or have boys over to their house, the court was told.

When she found the boy half naked in the bed, Chin assumed he was holding her daughter against her will, the court was told, and that it “never crossed her mind for a moment” that her daughter had brought him into the house herself.

Jennifer Chin leaving Armadale Magistrates Court in 2023 after being granted bail.Credit: 9 News Perth

Asking, “who’s under the blanket?” in response to seeing movement under the doona covers in the bedroom, Chin’s daughter told her it was a “homeless person”, which the court was told “did nothing to allay her fears”.

“She then had a tug of war and managed to pull [the covers] off … she saw immediately it was a male stranger who was naked as far as she could see,” Andrews said.

“She panicked, yelled ‘intruder, intruder, intruder … who are you?’ ... she was desperate and in fear.

“It never crossed her mind for a moment that [her daughter] had brought this man into the house. She didn’t even know she had a boyfriend.”

At 5″2 and weighing only 49 kilograms, Andrews said Chin wanted the knife “to protect herself”.

“She brandished the knife and hoped he would remain where he was until [her husband] got home,” Andrews said.

“The last thing she thought was that her daughter and this male had engaged in sexual activity. As far as she knew her 14-year-old daughter was still a virgin.”

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Andrews also told the jury that after the teen became cornered at the front door, that he turned to face her and was “coming towards her”.

“The expression she recalls is confidence and cocksureness that the male had,” he said.

“He was certainly not apologetic to her or scared. Jennifer felt scared. She didn’t know what his intentions were. How was she to know? To her mind he was an intruder there without her consent. In a split second, she had to think ... she used the knife in a shallow forward stabbing motion, not trying to harm the male, trying to keep distance between them.”

It was Chin’s daughter who called triple-zero after running to a vacant block with the boy away from the house.

While an ambulance treated his wounds that were described as “superficial”, police arrested Chin and charged her over the incident.

Chin, her daughter and the victim will give evidence in the trial which is anticipated to run for four days.

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