On Monday (8 Mar), the High Court sentenced a 33-year-old man to 15 years in jail and 15 strokes of the cane.
The man had pleaded guilty to one charge of aggravated sexual assault by penetration and one charge of aggravated molestation. Another five charges, three of which were for showing obscene objects to a young person, were taken into consideration when sentencing.
The former cleaner would have his young daughter stay over at his flat on weekends, as he and his wife were estranged.
According to TODAYonline, the couple married in December 2009 and lived with his parents. However, when their marriage broke down in 2013, the mother moved out and gained custody of the daughter.
Part of the terms was that she would stay with her father on the weekends. When this happened, they would sleep on the same bed in his room together.
The assaults happened between March and May 2015, when he was about 28 and the victim was 5.
The Straits Times reports that the man first sexually assaulted her in March 2015. He was watching a pornographic video when his daughter entered his bedroom after a shower. She was covered only by a bath towel.
Curious about what he was watching, she watched the video with him. He then performed an obscene act on her.
The abuse happened again in May 2015 where they watched a video together and he told her to perform oral sex on him.
A medical report from 2020 stated that the victim underwent surgery in October 2015 to remove a plastic toy from her private parts. She told a medical social worker that she had inserted the toy herself.
The man cannot be named due to a gag order to protect the identity of the girl, who is now 10 years old.
Victim Was Unlike Her Usual Self
Deputy Public Prosecutor Daphne Lim told the court that the victim had felt sad whenever she thought about what the accused did, and she asked herself why the accused had treated her in that way after the first incident.
The victim’s mother also noticed that she was emotional and dull, unlike her usual happy self after the stayover.
She questioned the girl, who told her what had happened.
The mother confronted the man over the phone, who eventually revealed that he had sexually assaulted her. He promised not to do it again and dissuaded her from making a police report.
She also tried to prevent the victim from seeing the man, but later relented when he asked to see the girl, according to The Straits Times.
In July 2019, the victim’s mother had approached Serangoon Moral Family Care Centre to help with the girl’s behavioural issues. The caseworker had advised her to file a police report, and the man was arrested on the same day.
TODAYonline noted that a psychiatrist from the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) found that the man did not have any mental disorder and was not of unsound mind at the time.
In mitigation, the man’s lawyer Chong Xin Yi said that he had stopped violating the victim of his own accord, before his ex-wife’s intervention, and that he “couldn’t forgive himself”.
“The accused has to live with the knowledge and guilt of what he has done. We submit that… (this) is retribution itself. To date, he cannot forgive himself for what he has done. He is only heartened that she misses him, from notes and drawings she has given him,” the lawyer said.
She added that in the four years between the girl’s confiding to her mother and the police report, they had continued to have a “good father and daughter relationship”.
While sentencing the accused, Justice Valerie Thean said the man’s abuse of his position of trust in relation to his very young biological daughter was an aggravating factor in his sentencing.
“Of course, there will be rehabilitation he can work towards and he really needs to think about it and think about his actions in relation to his child… He had abused his parental responsibility in the sanctity of a home, which should have been a safe place for a child to rest in,” she said.
For sexual assault by penetration of a minor under 14, the man could have been jailed up to 20 years, as well as fined or caned.
For molestation of a minor under 14, he could have been jailed up to five years, fined, caned, or been penalised by all three.
Feature Image: varandah / Shutterstock.com
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