SINGAPORE: A High Court judge said a young victim of sexual abuse was “absolutely right” to report her stepfather for his crimes, as he sentenced the offender to a jail term of 16 years and two months, and 18 strokes of the cane.
The 33-year-old man had earlier admitted that he had sexually abused his stepdaughter repeatedly over more than three years when she was between nine and 12 years old.
On Aug 28, Justice Dedar Singh Gill reassured the girl: “I want the victim to know that she was absolutely right in reporting the accused. She should not blame herself in any way for the depraved acts of the accused.”
The victim’s mother had blamed her for reporting the abuse, and believed that the girl had lied in order to gain freedom.
Justice Gill said: “It is my hope that the sentence meted out to the accused will deliver to (the girl) the justice that she seeks.”
He also rebuked the man and the victim’s mother for pressuring the girl to retract her allegations after the matter was reported to the police.
On one occasion, the man gave her a cup of bubble tea and S$80 (US$62) after asking her to drop the case.
The judge said: “I deplore the conduct of the accused and the victim’s biological mother in attempting to cover up the offences.”
On April 14, the man pleaded guilty to one count of rape, one count of outrage of modesty, and one count of cheating in an unrelated offence.
Six other charges, mostly for sex offences against the victim, were taken into consideration during sentencing.
Justice Gill took into account the victim’s vulnerability, the man’s abuse of his position of trust and the mental harm caused to the victim.
The victim was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and blamed herself for not disclosing the offences earlier.
The man and the girl’s mother married in 2017.
The man sexually assaulted the girl for the first time between December 2017 and April 2018, when she was nine years old.
One night, while the girl’s mother was at work, he molested her on the bottom bunk of a double-decker bed while her two younger sisters slept on the upper deck.
After this incident, he continued to molest her once or twice a month.
In early 2021, she recorded her feelings about the assaults on the Notes app on her phone. She ended the note saying: “You will be in jail already if I had told anyone about this.”
The man chanced upon the note the next day when he checked her phone.
After he threatened to kill her and her mother, she said she would not tell anyone about the abuse. He deleted the note.
The sexual assaults intensified – he forced her to perform oral sex on him.
After she told a friend about the depraved acts, the friend advised her to make a police report, but she was fearful that he would carry out his threat.
The victim and her friend then came up with a plan to lodge a police report.
On the afternoon of July 17, 2021, she went to her friend’s home for a birthday celebration and told her friend’s mother about the sexual abuse.
The woman called the police and the man was arrested that night.
A forensic test later found the man’s semen on the victim’s blanket.
On Sept 10, 2021, the victim was placed in a residential home under the direction of the Ministry of Social and Family Development.
On June 21, 2022, her mother forwarded the man a text message about an upcoming meeting between the girl and prosecutors.
She told her husband that she would coax the girl to say that she had made a mistake.
Two days later, the couple met the victim, and told her to say she had given a false statement.
As a result of their pressure, she ran away from the home.
The next evening, she agreed to meet her mother, thinking she would be alone.
At the meeting, her mother told her to get into a van. Her stepfather, sisters and two uncles were in the vehicle, where the man and the girl’s mother again told her to tell the prosecutors that she had given a false statement to the police.
Before she alighted from the van, the man gave her a cup of bubble tea and S$80 cash, and asked her to tell him if she had no money. - The Straits Times/ANN
