The girl told her mother about the sexual abuse but the woman disbelieved her after the man denied the allegations. -- ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/ANN): A 53-year-old man was convicted on Jan 19 by the High Court of sexually assaulting his girlfriend’s daughter at home and in a van parked at cemeteries.
The victim was 10 to 11 years old when the offences were committed between February 2021 and February 2022.
She found the courage to tell her mother about the sexual abuse in December 2021.
But the woman disbelieved her after the man denied the allegations, and the abuse continued.
The offences finally came to light after the victim broke down and told her older half-sister about the assaults.
This eventually led the victim’s father to take her to make a police report on Feb 3, 2022.
The victim testified during the trial that her mother scolded her for making accusations against the man and told her to stop lying.
The man, who is stateless but was born in Singapore, faced four counts of sexual assault by penetration, two counts of outrage of modesty, and one count of sexual exploitation of a child.
He cannot be named under a gag order imposed to protect the victim’s identity.
Justice Aidan Xu found him guilty of all seven charges on Jan 19, after a trial that began in April 2025.
The man will be sentenced on a later date.
He lived with the victim, her mother, and her younger brother in a one-room rental flat.
The children shared a mattress in the living room while the man and her mother slept in the bedroom.
The victim testified that in February 2021, she woke up to the man touching her under her clothes as he sat on the edge of the mattress.
She also testified about the various occasions in a rented van when he committed sex acts on her and made her perform a sex act on him.
The man, who was represented by lawyer Teo Choo Kee, claimed in court that he could not have abused the girl in February 2021 because he moved in only in April 2021.
He also claimed that he had no opportunity to commit the offences in the van.
The couple would drive the van to the cemetery at odd hours for work, and the victim and her brother would go along.
When they spent the night there, the man slept in the driver’s seat, the woman in the front passenger’s seat, and the two children on a small sofa placed behind the driver’s seat.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Tay Jia En said these claims are contradicted by other evidence.
He sought to impeach the man’s credibility, pointing out discrepancies between his testimony and his statements to the police.
For instance, the man told police in video-recorded interviews that he had accidentally touched the victim on multiple occasions, but in court, he made no mention of any touching.
On Jan 19, Justice Xu accepted that there were material inconsistencies between the man’s testimony and his account in the video-recorded statements.
“What these inconsistencies then led to was that the accused could not be believed,” said the judge.
As for the girl’s testimony, he concluded that despite some inconsistencies, it was clear and detailed, and sufficient to convict the man. -- The Straits Times/ANN
