Chau Lam details years of abuse before mother's killing

Testifying at her murder trial Wednesday, Chau Lam sobbed as she described how her 88-year-old mother dug her fingernails into her forehead while she tried to trim them for her.

"She scolded me and then she put her nail to the middle of my forehead," Lam told the court. 

Chau Lam, 59, and her sister Hue Lam, 62, have each pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the October 2022 death of their mother, Kieu Lam. The jury trial began earlier this month in the Superior Court of Justice in Ottawa.

Lam's testimony, translated from Vietnamese, began with her admitting to loving her mother, but also to killing her. 

That set the tone for a long, emotional day of testimony in front of jurors as Lam recounted numerous instances when her mother scolded and attacked her.

"Sometimes for no reason, mother scolded or hit us," she testified.

The sisters have said they suffered through years of abuse at the hands of their mother, and Lam described the constant attacks to being stabbed.

"It felt like mom had a knife and she would pull it out and slap me, and pull it out and slap me again," she said. 

During her testimony, Lam said there was no affection in the home where "mom did not allow" the sisters to learn English and prevented them from having a social life. 

"Mother was never home alone, I was always there with her," Lam said. 

Lam said the abuse got worse after her older sister was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and their mother returned home from a failed attempt to place her in a nursing home. 

She said Kieu Lam required constant attention, and the sisters did all the cooking and cleaning. She described the household as "like a funeral home."

Lam said they did not want to tell police nor anyone else about the abuse because they feared their mother would "beat the both of us to death" if she found out.

In the week leading up the the killing, Lam said she and her sister were being abused daily.

Crown disputes sisters' account

Prosecutors have argued Kieu Lam gave the sisters life, only to have hers taken. They have previously described the older woman as "sleeping defenceless" in bed when the sisters smashed her head with a hammer and strangled her. 

The Crown pointed to the mother's age and weakness to argue that she posed no physical threat to her daughters, and noted they were largely free to leave the house for work, appointments and temple.

Two of Kieu Lam's sons testified earlier this week that their sisters had endured years of verbal and physical abuse.

On Monday, Chanh Hyunh, 64, told the jury he had heard his mother verbally abuse his sisters, and repeated what he had previously told police after her death — that their mother was "the evil one."

He admitted however that he had seen their mother physically assault his sisters only once in 30 years, and had not witnessed verbal abuse beyond what was described in court as "nagging."

Earlier in the trial, the jury saw video interviews recorded with both sisters hours after their mother's death. 

In the interviews, conducted at Ottawa police headquarters on Oct. 31, 2022, they admitted to killing their mother as she slept. One sister also told a 911 dispatcher and responding officers what they had done.

The sisters said in the recordings that they were "so angry" after years of emotional and physical abuse.