SINGAPORE: A man went on trial on Tuesday (Jan 21) for raping his wife in the place where he lived during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Both foreigners are protected by a gag order. Their nationalities, ages, occupations and the location of the incident were redacted in court documents.
Before the pandemic, they commuted to Singapore daily for work. During the pandemic, the man was stuck in Singapore and found a place to live.
The woman moved to Singapore in August 2020 and stayed in a flat provided by her employer. The couple continued living apart.
On the morning of Nov 8, 2020, the man wanted to meet his wife to pass her a gift. She initially declined, but met him when he showed up at her void deck.
They got into a heated argument when she rejected his present.
According to Deputy Public Prosecutors Alan Loh and Emily Koh, the man slapped and kicked her many times at the void deck.
The prosecutors said the woman listened to her supervisor’s advice to follow her husband to resolve their fight amicably, even though she had misgivings.
She rode on his motorcycle and they reached the place where he lived at close to 1pm.
According to facts agreed upon by both sides, the man slapped his wife and showed her a video of a sexual act. He remarked that the woman in the video looked like her.
According to the prosecution, the woman fell and chipped her tooth when she was slapped.
The prosecution’s case is that the man locked the roller shutters and door of the place where he lived to prevent his wife from escaping, and then raped her.
He allegedly held a metal rod and threatened to stab her with it, such that she was labouring under fear of injury during the sexual acts.
He is also accused of threatening to injure his wife if she told others what he had done to her, and telling her to say she had fallen down a staircase instead.
This allegedly led her to lie to her family that she was fine and that her quarrel with her husband had been resolved.
According to the prosecution, the man then forced his wife to spend the night with him. They left together after 6am and went to her flat.
The prosecution said the woman asked her flatmate to help her call the police. She was brought to the hospital in an ambulance and told medical staff that she had been raped.
The man has claimed trial for two counts of aggravated rape and one count each of attempted aggravated rape, aggravated outrage of modesty, voluntarily causing hurt and criminal intimidation.
Two more counts of voluntarily causing hurt and one count of possessing obscene films have been stood down during the trial.
The man admits that the sexual acts took place, but his defence is that they were consensual.
He is represented by Mr Shashi Nathan, Ms Harjeet Kaur and Mr U Sudharshanraj under the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme.
The prosecution will introduce evidence from 38 witnesses to prove its case.
“The sexual acts took place after the accused had physically assaulted the victim and threatened to hurt the victim with the metal rod,” the prosecutors said.
At the time, she was injured, in fear of being hurt by her husband, and had no escape, they said.
“The accused cannot reasonably argue that he, in good faith, mistakenly believed that the victim consented to the acts in question,” they said.
Singapore fully repealed marital immunity for rape in January 2020. The first conviction for sexual assault within a marriage after the law was changed took place in April 2024.
The penalty for rape is up to 20 years in jail and a fine or caning. If the victim was put in fear of hurt, there is a minimum punishment of eight years in jail and 12 strokes of the cane.
The punishment for voluntarily causing hurt is a jail term of up to two years, a fine of up to S$5,000 or both.
If found guilty of aggravated outrage of modesty against his wife, the man faces two to 10 years in jail and caning.
If convicted of criminal intimidation against her, he faces a jail term of up to two years, a fine or both punishments.
As the woman was in an intimate relationship with the man at the time of the alleged offences, the court can impose up to twice the maximum punishment if he is found guilty.
