SINGAPORE: For five years from 2018 to 2023, a teenage boy sexually assaulted his younger sister, with the sexual abuse later escalating to rape.
The assaults only came to light when the girl eventually told their mother what her brother had done, and their father made a police report.
On Monday (April 6), the teen, now 19, pleaded guilty to two aggravated outrage of modesty charges and one charge of aggravated rape.
He is expected to be sentenced on May 7. He cannot be named due to a gag order to protect his sister’s identity.
In 2018, the boy had been watching pornography and wanted to replicate the sexual acts he had seen on his sister, who was around eight or nine years old at the time.
Seeing that their parents were not home, he went into his sister’s room, asked her to lie down on the bed and molested her.
“Following this first sexual assault, the victim, who had previously been close with the accused, started to fear him,” said Deputy Public Prosecutors Hidayat Amir and Yeo Kee Hwan.
The teen continued to sexually assault the victim. On one occasion, he requested his sister to perform oral sex on him but she refused.
On another occasion, he showed his sister a pornographic video while in her room. Their mother, who got home earlier than usual, saw this and scolded him.
Since then, their parents prohibited the teen from entering his sister’s room.
However, from 2020 to 2021, the teen continued to sexually assault his sister in her room on several occasions. He did so while their parents were not home or while they were asleep.
The DPPs said: “At some point between 2020 and 2022, the accused was no longer satisfied with the acts of molest and decided to intensify the nature of his sexual assault.”
The teen then raped his sister several times on separate occasions.
The court heard that the family’s domestic helper caught the boy sexually assaulting his sister. She threatened him that she would tell his parents, but eventually did not.
The helper subsequently kept a close watch on the girl and was often with her in her room, which led to the teen ceasing his sexual assaults.
In August 2021, the helper moved out of the unit as her contract had ended, causing the boy to continue sexually assaulting his sister.
The DPPs said the girl initially attempted to stop the abuse by throwing books at her brother, pushing him and hitting him. Despite this, he continued to sexually assault her.
The teen’s acts were revealed in January 2023.
One morning, while his sister was asleep, the teen went into her room and sexually assaulted her. When she woke, he quickly left her room and returned to his own.
At the time, their father had woken up to use the toilet and sensed something was amiss. He questioned the teen and asked if he had been in his sister’s room, which he denied.
Hearing the confrontation, their mother asked the teen the same question. Again, he denied having been in his sister’s room.
Their mother then went to speak to the girl, who said her brother had touched her.
The father then scolded the boy, who eventually admitted to what he had done. Later that day, the father took the girl to a police station and lodged a report.
Seeking 11 years’ jail and 15 strokes of the cane, the prosecutors called the boy “not only a persistent but a cunning sexual predator”.
The first instance of sexual abuse marked the turning point when the girl’s close bond with her brother was overtaken by fear of him, they said.
And she continued to live in fear for five years as the accused was unrelenting in his sexual abuse, the DPP said. “On the contrary, the abuse only grew in depravity,” they added. - The Straits Times/ANN
