SINGAPORE, March 9 — For 14 years, a father terrorised his three young daughters by subjecting them to repeated rapes and sexual assaults.
The Singaporean man started sexually abusing them from the ages of 11 or 12, targeting his second daughter soon after he stopped raping the oldest girl. They did not dare to tell anyone out of fear.
His crimes — committed between 2005 and 2019 — came to light only when his youngest child confided in her friend, who advised her to tell their school teacher.
Today, the former cleaner at a primary school, now 55, was sentenced to 33 years’ jail in the High Court.
He cannot be caned as offenders aged 50 or above are spared the cane by law.
The man cannot be named because of a court order to protect the identities of his daughters. He has been diagnosed with paedophilic disorder.
His victims are now 13, 22 and 26 years old. He also has a 17-year-old son.
The man pleaded guilty to three rape charges and one count of trying to procure an indecent act from his youngest daughter.
High Court judge See Kee Oon considered eight other similar charges during sentencing.
Justice See described the man’s crimes as “utterly heinous and abhorrent”, saying he might have continued if not for his youngest daughter’s courage in reporting him.
“He caused significant physical and psychological harm to his three biological daughters, and severely violated their trust in their own father. There is a compelling need to prevent the accused from lapsing into recidivism,” he added.
Justice See, nevertheless, noted that the man pleaded guilty, which showed remorse, and spared his children the ordeal of testifying against him.
This was the second case of sexual abuse involving a father and his children that went before the courts this week.
Repeated abuses
The man began sexually abusing his oldest daughter in 2005, when she was around 11.
Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Norine Tan said that he developed “urges” from watching pornography and forced her to have sex with him.
The second time he assaulted her, she was lying in bed at home doing her homework when he entered her room. He touched her inappropriately even after she started crying.
He told her to stop before undressing and raping her, even though she continued sobbing and repeatedly told him it was painful.
He raped the girl numerous times until sometime between 2010 and 2011, when he turned his attention to his second daughter.
He warned the older girl against telling anyone about the acts. She complied as she was extremely afraid of him.
He then repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted his second daughter from when she was about 12 to 21 years old, stopping only a few days before his arrest in October 2019.
From 2012, the frequency of his acts ranged from several times a week to a few times a month.
On the last occasion on October 19, 2019, the girl was in a room with her younger sister when he gestured to her to go to the kitchen, where he raped her. His wife was asleep in the living room then.
Like her older sister, the girl did not dare to confide in anyone out of fear.
As for the youngest girl, he forced her to perform an obscene act on him in June 2018, when she was about 11.
On the evening of October 22, 2019, he gestured to her to come with him, in an effort to have sex with her.
The girl, however, shook her head and started crying. He was frustrated at her refusal, but did not pursue the matter.
She feared being raped because she had chanced on him sexually abusing the second daughter on two occasions.
She soon confided in her friend because she did not want him to persist in his ways. On her friend’s advice, she told a teacher, who took her to file a police report.
Assaults left two girls with ptsd
The oldest girl was assessed at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) after her father was arrested.
She was found to have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and harboured suicidal thoughts during the assaults.
The man’s second daughter was also diagnosed with PTSD and major depressive disorder, and would require treatment with possible psychological therapy.
She reported symptoms of low mood and hopelessness, and felt life was not worth living.
A month after his arrest, the man underwent a psychiatric examination at IMH. He was diagnosed with paedophilic disorder and assessed to have a high risk of committing sexual crimes again, as he persisted with his acts for more than a decade.
DPP Tan, along with Deputy Chief Prosecutor Mohamed Faizal, sought at least 35 years and four months’ jail, including one year behind bars in lieu of the maximum 24 strokes of the cane.
DPP Tan noted that the 12 charges pressed against the man were “hardly even sufficient to encompass the extent and egregious nature of his wrongdoing”.
“It would be fair to say that this case represents one of the worst of its kind when it relates to sexual offending,” she said.
The man’s lawyers Gino Hardial Singh, Tan Shu Ling and Kwoh Ji Wei, from law firm Abbots Chambers LLC, asked for 27 years’ imprisonment instead.
For each rape charge, he could have been jailed up to 20 years and fined.
For trying to procure an indecent act from a child, he could have been jailed up to five years or fined up to S$10,000, or punished with both. — TODAY
