SINGAPORE: A man who proclaimed that “it takes two hands to clap” after he was confronted for sexually abusing his teenage daughter was sentenced to 17½ years’ jail and 16 strokes of the cane on Thursday (March 5).
The man had pleaded guilty in September 2025 to two charges of sexual penetration of a minor under 16, and two charges of exploitative sexual penetration of a minor between 16 and 18.
Nine other charges for other sex offences he committed against the victim were taken into consideration during sentencing.
The abuse took place from 2017 to 2020 when the victim was 13 to 16 years old.
In sentencing, Justice Dedar Singh Gill said the 40-year-old man’s remark that it takes two hands to clap implied the victim was also to blame for the sexual relationship.
Referring to a psychiatric report, the judge noted that the man appeared to prioritise his own sexual needs, and discounted or minimised the impact on the victim and rationalised his acts.
Justice Gill also considered the harm caused to the victim, noting that her feelings of hurt, helplessness and bewilderment are best captured in a letter she wrote to her father during the years she was sexually exploited.
In the letter, she asked her father if he ever cared about her feelings, and said he had always lied that he would stop engaging in sexual activities with her but never did.
She also wrote: “I forgave you for not being able to raise me up and see me grow. But then you torn (sic) my heart into millions of pieces.”
The victim’s parents married in 2009 after the girl was born out of wedlock in 2003. The couple had two sons after their marriage.
The victim was raised by her grandmother, who pretended to be her mother while her parents pretended that they were her siblings.
She eventually learnt the truth when she was in primary school after chancing upon her birth certificate.
In mid-2017, her mother discovered text messages between the girl, who was then 13, and her former boyfriend.
The victim’s father confronted the girl but then pivoted to asking her to demonstrate on him what she had done with her former boyfriend, and persuaded her to kiss him.
Over the next three years, until September 2020, the man’s sexual advances escalated to touching her inappropriately and engaging in various penetrative sexual acts with her.
He would usually enter her bedroom when the family was asleep, close the door behind him and engage in sexual activities with her.
At one point, she wrote him the letter, asking him to stop what he was doing to her.
After he received the letter, the man stopped sexually exploiting her for a while, but the acts resumed afterwards.
On Aug 23, 2020, when the victim was 16, she had sex with her husband before he left for work. It was not specified in court when she had got married.
After her husband left, her father entered her bedroom and had sex with her. She implored him to stop and suggested another sex act so that he would end what he was doing.
On the night of Aug 31 that year, the man started punching and kicking the walls of the flat after he found her bedroom door locked.
The next day, he tried to touch her, but she pushed his hand away.
The man later threatened to tell her husband about their sexual activities.
The victim then decided to tell her mother what her father had done.
When the victim’s mother confronted the man and hit him, he retorted that it takes two hands to clap.
The victim also told her husband that she had been raped by her father. Her husband called the police, and her father was arrested on the same day after he surrendered himself.
When he was taken to court in 2021, the man faced 14 charges, including one for rape and one for aggravated rape.
The prosecution offered the man a plea deal, and after rounds of to-and-fro, the rape charges were reduced to charges for exploitative sexual penetration of a minor. - The Straits Times/ANN
