SINGAPORE, June 19 — After his girlfriend and her young daughter, then nine years old, began staying with him, he grew close to the girl but soon took sexual advantage of her.
His girlfriend caught him in the act and confronted him before making a police report the next day.
Yesterday, the 35-year-old man was sentenced to a year and eight months’ jail and three strokes of the cane for his actions. He cannot be named due to a court gag order to protect the victim’s identity.
He had pleaded guilty to one charge of molesting a minor under 14, for which he could have been jailed up to five years, fined, caned, or any combination of the three.
The court heard that he began dating the girl’s mother in 2013, and they lived together in a flat from July 2018.
He would pick the girl up from school every day and they often played together. If she wanted something that she knew her mother would not buy for her, she would ask him for it instead, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Chong Yong told the court.
On April 5 last year, all three of them went out to buy an e-bike before returning to the flat.
The girl took off her pants and put them in the washing machine before resting on the bed, while the adults busied themselves with household chores.
A short while later, the man sat next to her on the bed and started touching her chest.
She sat up in shock, but he went further by pulling up her T-shirt and molesting her further.
He ignored her pleas to stop and instead lay down on the bed, exposing himself to her. He then tried to get her to perform a sex act on him by pulling her hand towards him, but her mother, who had been in the toilet, came to the room and caught him in the act.
Shocked, she shouted at her boyfriend and asked what he was trying to do. He immediately let go and pretended like nothing had happened, telling her that he had not done anything.
She noticed that her daughter looked lost and confused, so she took the girl down to the void deck and comforted her.
Eventually, the girl recounted what he had done and said this was the first time he had touched her like this.
Her mother took her to a neighbour’s home to sleep that night, in order to keep her away from the man. When he later asked her where the girl had gone, she kept mum as she feared for her daughter’s safety, DPP Chong told the court.
She lodged a police report at Punggol Neighbourhood Police Centre the next day.
Chong revealed that the man has been repeatedly dealt with for various offences since 2002, mainly drug-related ones.
The victim has suffered nightmares and “intrusive memories” of the sexual abuse, the prosecutor added.
In mitigation, the man said through an interpreter that he has two children of his own and apologised for his actions, adding that he did not intend to molest the victim. — TODAY
