A 48-year-old man (who cannot be named to due to a court order protecting the victim) who raped his biological daughter over the course of seven years, was sentenced to 28 years in jail and 24 strokes of the cane by the High Court yesterday (August 20).
The victim was seven or eight years old when the crimes started.
The court heart that when the father first sexually assaulted her, she didn’t even understand what was being done to her.
The girl was exposed to p*rnographic videos that desensitised her and it was only when she was aboutnine years old that she began to realise something was wrong.
But by then, she already complied with his sexual demands because they shared a good relationship and he was her father.
Justice Dedar Singh Gill condembed the father during sentencing, for abusing his clear position of authority for his perverted sexual gratification, adding that the victim was at an age where she should be enjoying a carefree life.
The father would sexually exploit his daughter once or twice a year whenever the victim’s biological mother wasn’t at home.
The first time he assaulted her, the victim’s mother was outside working and her younger sister was in the living room watching television, the father and the victim were alone in the master bedroom and he told her to lock the door because he wanted to “massage her”.
Following the assault, the victim then complained that she felt pain when she urinated, but he told her not to reveal to anyone what they had done.
The truth came to light in late 2017 when the victim turned 14 and told her mother that she had been sexually assaulted when she was younger, the mother then took her to Bukit Merah East Neighbourhood Police Centre to make a police report where she revealed to officers that her father had raped her.
The father was then subsequently arrested.
The father pleaded guilty to three charges of aggravated statutory rape.
Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Jane Lim argued that the accused had “robbed the victim of her childhood and innocence” adn sought a jail term of 30 years and 24 strokes of the cane as his punishment.
She added that the serious breach of trust was made worse by the fact the the crimes were commited in the “sanctity of her own home”.
She also added the the father had unprotected sex with the girl which came with a risk of pregnancy and spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
Mr Daniel Atticus Xu, the father’s lawyer, argued that there was “no violence, no pregnancy and no STDs” in the case but DPP Lim retorted that these factors should not be seen as mitigating factors, they should instead by seen as “serious aggravating factors”.
The victim’s mother requested to speak to her husband via video conferencing after the sentencing.
Mr Xu revealed that the wife is “very conflicted” because “on one hand it is her daughter; on the other hand, it is the husband.”