Kota Kinabalu: A consultant psychiatrist told the Coroner’s Court on Thursday that there was a fundamental relationship of trust between Zara Qairina Mahathir and her mother.
The 75th deponent, Dr Wong Haw Huo, who continued his testimony at the inquest, said this trust was evident from evidence corroborated by multiple sources.
“You can see there is frequent contact through the messaging, through the verbal output, the audio clips, and there’s frequent physical contact, with Zara going back home every weekend to see her mother. She was looking forward to going home to enjoy her mother’s cooking.
“She was even looking forward to continuing to excel and do better in secondary school academically. At the same time, she was not trying to hide anything.
“I mean specifically, she was open. She made the conversation very transparent. Why do I say so? Because from the audio clips that we learned about during the last hearing, Zara was not only sharing about her school environment.
“Zara was always seeking advice from her mom, asking, ‘How do I do this? How do I do that?’ And her mom always gave reassurance and confidence to Zara, saying, ‘You can do this.’“Besides that, Zara also shared her vulnerable side, that she was being suppressed, ridiculed or accused by several people or seniors in the school between March and June, and that she was seeking help.
“So from here, we can learn about the openness and transparency of information built on the foundation of trust,” said Dr Wong.
Responding to questions from counsel Shahlan Jufri, Dr Wong explained how he interpreted Zara’s diary entries, the affectionate audio and video recordings exchanged between Zara and her mother, and the apparent discrepancies in the diary entries.
“To resolve this discrepancy, we have to zoom out and look at the bigger picture. As I said earlier, the whole diary is more than 100 pages. If we focus only on the negative aspects without understanding the positive ones, it can easily lead to biased inferences.
“So we have to examine the consistency of the pattern. Here, I am referring to her behavioural pattern, how she interacted with her primary caregiver, who was her mother, and how she reacted to disagreements or conflicts with her.
“We can see this is quite common among adolescent girls because their brains are still developing. They may react very quickly. These reactions are episodic, and it is common for adolescents to express their feelings through private diary writing.
“Don’t forget, this is part of their coping mechanism, a habit, a venting outlet that allows them to temporarily release dissatisfaction or frustration at a particular moment or situation.
“But here, we cannot further verify what actually triggered the conflict between the mother and daughter. However, if we zoom out and look at the bigger picture, we can see the presence of psychological trust.
“What do I mean by trust? Trusting a person means you are willing to accept both good things and negative comments from that person because you trust them,” he said.
