SINGAPORE: A 45-year-old Singaporean man admitted on Monday (Mar 7) to raping his daughter when she was 12 to 13 years old, and denying her food for four days.
The charges formed part of a 14-year period over which the man sexually abused four of his daughters between 2004 and 2018. Prosecutors said the harm inflicted upon the victims by their father was "something that no sentence can fully capture, and no punishment can erase".
The man, who cannot be named due to gag orders on his and the victim's identity, was convicted after pleading guilty to seven charges of aggravated rape, aggravated sexual assault involving penetration, aggravated outrage of modesty and ill-treatment of a child.
Twenty-six more charges, mostly for rape, sexual assault and outrage of modesty of his other daughters, will be taken into consideration for sentencing. They also included charges of voluntarily causing hurt to his wife by punching, caning and slapping her.
The man is set to be sentenced by Justice Tan Siong Thye next week.
The court heard that the man was a freelance camp instructor for kids' adventure camps prior to his arrest. He was married to a 41-year-old woman.
The victim, identified as V1 in court documents, is one of their children. She is now 16 and a student.
The couple had four other children together – three girls now aged 12, 18 and 19 and a boy now aged 15. The accused also has two children from a previous marriage – his daughter is now 24 and his son is now 23.
HAVE SEX OR STOP GOING TO SCHOOL
The abuse started when V1 was in Primary 5. In 2016, her father called her into his room and showed her a pornographic video of a man and a girl engaged in sexual acts. He told her that the girl in the video was in Primary 5 and the man was her father. He then made her "pinky-promise" not to tell anyone about this.
That year, the man started to sexually abuse his daughter by touching her chest and buttocks and having sex with her. This happened on several occasions from 2016 to 2018, usually at night while her mother was out working, in the accused's bedroom.
In 2018, the man told the victim that she needed to have sex with him every month or he would stop her from going to school. This frightened the victim, as she was afraid of having to remain home all day if she did not attend school, which would mean spending more time with her father and being sexually abused by him.
The court heard that the victim did not dare to physically resist her father as she was afraid he would turn aggressive and withdraw her from school. Whenever she verbally protested to the sexual acts, her father ignored her.
She did not tell anyone about the abuse because her father made her promise not to, and she did not want him to hate her. She also feared no one would believe her, and that she would be sent away from her family to stay in a girls' home.
CANBERRA FLAT INCIDENTS
Sometime in September or October 2017, the accused brought V1 with him to visit the family's new flat in Canberra, which was still under construction. She was 12 years old at the time.
At the flat, he asked her to take a shower with him. After they had dried off with towels but were still naked, he brought her to the room that would later become her bedroom, and placed newspapers on the cement floor.
He told his daughter to lie on her back, put on a condom and raped her. When it was over, they washed up and went home. He made her promise not to tell anyone what happened.
The family moved into the new flat in November 2017. Sometime between January and November 2018, on a weekend afternoon when the victim's mother was not at home, the man called the victim into the master bedroom.
He asked her to remove her underwear and raped her. The girl felt pain and told him so, but he did not stop. When it was over, she washed herself in the master bedroom toilet. He again made her promise not to tell anyone what happened.
"BODY CHECKS" ON VICTIM AND SISTERS
At least twice in 2018, the accused conducted "body checks" on V1, then aged 12 to 13, and two of her sisters who were aged 14 or 15 and 15 or 16 at the time. The two other sisters were identified as V2 and V4 in court documents.
One such "body check" took place at night between January and Nov 16, 2018, when the man called his daughters into the master bedroom one by one.
When it was V1's turn to go in, he told her to remove her underwear and lie down on a settee. He performed a sex act on her under the pretext of cleaning her private part. The victim felt uncomfortable and in slight pain. The man then took a photograph of her private part with his phone before asking her to put her clothes back on.
Shortly after, the man called his three daughters back into the bedroom together. He called each girl to him while the other two stood at a distance. He showed each girl a photograph of her vagina on his phone, gave her "instructions on how to clean her vagina properly after menstruating" and then deleted the photograph.
Another similar "body check" took place between Sep 20 and Nov 16, 2018 at night involving the same three girls.
DENIED FOOD FOR SEVERAL DAYS
In the evening of Sep 1, 2018, the accused got angry that V1, V2 and V4 had brought their younger siblings to the playground before finishing their household chores to his satisfaction.
He punished the girls by not allowing them and their younger brother, then about 12, to eat for the next four days.
The man threw away all the food in the house, including all raw and frozen food in their refrigerator. He did not cook, and also forbade his wife from cooking, instead dining out if they wanted to eat.
There were large bottles of water in the refrigerator, but the accused bound them together with rubber bands so he would know if the children had tampered with them.
He also cut off the electricity supply to the family's lights, refrigerator and air-conditioner. When it was warm, the children fanned themselves with pieces of paper.
Over the next four days, the children subsisted on tapwater and food that was smuggled to them by other members of the family without their father's knowledge.
For example, the children's mother brought them packets of chicken rice and hid biscuits and potato chips in the letterbox, which were retrieved for them by the boyfriend of their eldest sister.
On the night of Sep 6, 2018, the man allowed his children to eat plain rice. They resumed eating and drinking as usual the next day.
LAST INCIDENT OF RAPE
The last rape occurred on the night of Nov 16, 2018, after the children's mother left to work an overnight shift as a sales assistant. The accused told V1 to come into the master bedroom with a towel, as if she intended to bathe there.
Sometime after 10pm, the girl went to the master bedroom and locked the door after herself, as she was told. The man asked his daughter to wash her private parts in the toilet. She did so and put her clothes back on, but as she made to leave the toilet, he asked her to go back in.
The man went into the toilet with her, kissed her, asked her to remove her clothes and perform a sex act on him. After a while, he tried to rape her on the floor. When he failed to do so, he moved to the bed and raped the victim there. The girl told him that it was very painful, but he told her to bear with it.
After it was over, they washed up in the toilet and the man told his daughter not to tell anyone what had happened.
DISCOVERY OF THE RAPE
Later that night, the girl's sisters V2 and V4 noticed her leaving the master bedroom and found it strange that she had showered there. When they asked her what had happened, the girl broke down and said that their father had just had sex with her. She also said this had been happening since she was in Primary 5.
V2 persuaded her sister to file a police report, and they decided to go to a police station far away from their house so their father could not find them.
The two girls left the flat at about 12.20am that night under the pretense of going to dispose of rubbish. They took a Grab car which V2's boyfriend had booked, to a police station in Bedok. There, V1 lodged a police report to say her father had been sexually assaulting her.
After his daughters left the flat, the man searched for them at three police stations but to no avail. That morning, he visited 10 different websites on how to pass a lie detector test. He was arrested on the afternoon of Nov 17, 2018.
After lodging the police report, V1 was taken to KK Women's and Children's Hospital, where she was warded for a week. She then stayed at a children's home for about two weeks before returning home.
In a victim impact statement taken from V1 in February, the girl said she still had nightmares about the assaults at least once a month.
ABUSE OF TRUST, SEXUAL GROOMING AND THREATS: PROSECUTION
The prosecution sought a sentence of 32 years in jail and 24 strokes of the cane – the maximum number allowed in Singapore. Deputy public prosecutors Muhamad Imaduddien, Sarah Siaw and Angela Ang highlighted five aggravating factors.
These were: The accused's forcible sexual penetration of a victim below 14 years old, his serious abuse of trust as the father of the victim, his sexual grooming and threats against the victim, premeditation to create "windows of opportunity" where he was alone with the victim and his decision not to use protection during some of the rapes.
They also argued that the man's plea of guilt should be given minimal weight as the plea was entered late, after the case had already gone to trial.
The man's pro bono defence lawyer, Ms Ng Pei Qi of Rajah & Tann, asked for a sentence of 26 to 28 years in jail and 24 strokes of the cane.
For each charge of aggravated rape, the man could be jailed between eight and 20 years and caned at least 12 strokes.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/man-rape-sexual-abuse-daughters-camp-instructor-2544441
