SINGAPORE: A man who repeatedly sexually abused his stepdaughter when she was aged between 13 and 14 was sentenced to 25 years’ jail and the maximum 24 strokes of the cane by the High Court on Friday (Mar 28).
The 30-year-old man had claimed trial to eight charges – six counts of rape and two counts of sexual assault involving penetration- and denied committing any sexual acts on her.
He was convicted of five counts of rape and two counts of sexual assault by penetration on Feb 26 but was acquitted of the remaining charge of rape.
All parties in this case cannot be named due to a gag order protecting the victim, now 17.
Delivering her sentence on Friday, Justice Mavis Chionh said the case featured aggravating factors, with the most egregious being the accused’s “brazen abuse” of the position of trust he held as the victim’s stepfather, in carrying out multiple sexual assaults on the young and vulnerable victim.
She also considered the accused’s lack of remorse in making false allegations against the police to be an aggravating factor.
The man had asserted that he had given a false confession because he believed that his stepdaughter was being held in police custody. He claimed that he wanted to save his child from being punished by the police for telling untruths.
WHAT HAPPENED
According to court documents, the man had moved into a one-room flat where the victim and her mother lived sometime in end-2017 or 2018. He married the victim’s mother in 2020.
The man and the victim shared a close relationship, with the victim seeing him as a father figure.
Sometime in March 2021, he sexually assaulted the victim, then 13 years old, when they were alone in the flat.
He proceeded to continually sexually assault her on at least five other occasions. At the time of the incidents, he was 26 years old.
Court documents revealed that he would wait for his wife to leave the house before sexually assaulting the victim, and that this would usually occur on Saturday mornings or during the school holidays, when the offender’s wife would go to work.
Details of the sexual abuse came to light in late-September 2021, when the victim told two of her school friends about the sexual assaults.
She also disclosed the sexual abuse to her form teacher, who then informed the school’s vice-principal.
The school alerted the Child Protective Service and the victim was brought to KK Women’s & Children’s Hospital. A police report was subsequently filed and the man was arrested on Sep 24, 2021.
In their sentencing submission, Deputy Public Prosecutors Jane Lim and Jeremy Bin sought a sentence between 28 to 31 years’ jail and 24 strokes, given the victim’s age and vulnerability as well as the prolonged period of sexual abuse.
“The victim was barely older than a child when the accused raped her. She wanted nothing more than a father figure in her life. Instead, the accused sexually assaulted her to satisfy his own perverse desires,” they said in their submission.
“After the victim finally found the courage to report what was happening to her, the accused showed not one iota of remorse, claiming that she was a liar with a motive to frame him, and casting blatantly false aspersions against multiple officers of the Singapore Police Force.”
In their submission, they added that the victim “essentially lost” her family after the report was made.
“She lost the accused, who was her father-figure, and her mother, who she was very close to. Her mother even blamed her for making a report against the accused,” they said, adding that as a result, the victim had to live separately from her mother and without any family in an orphanage.
