As a young child, you rely on your parents to protect you from the world. So, what happens when your parent is the one hurting you?
Singapore’s High Court sentenced a 33-year-old Singaporean man to 15 years of jail and 15 strokes of the cane on 8th March. He was charged for showing pornographic videos to his then 4-year-old daughter before sexually assaulting her.
The child is now 10 years old and is the only child of the family. The victim’s parents married in December 2009 and stayed with the husband’s parents in Singapore. After the marriage dissolved in 2013, the victim’s mother moved out and took custody of her. The child however, visited her father at her grandparent’s flat on the weekends. When she stayed over, she would share a bed with her father in his bedroom.
The first sexual assault took place in March 2015. The man, 28 at the time, was watching a pornographic video on his mobile phone when his daughter entered the bedroom after showering. She was only wearing a bath towel. She asked what he was watching and he showed her his phone. They ended up watching the video together. After seeing a man performing a sexual act on a woman, he performed the same act on his daughter before going to the toilet to masturbate. Deputy Public Prosecutor Daphne Lim told the court that the incident saddened the victim and she questioned why her father had treated her that way.
Another incident occurred sometime between April and May 2015. The victim, about 4 to 5 years old then, was asleep on the bed when he watched another pornographic video. After the child woke up, he showed her a scene of a woman performing oral sex. He then told her to “follow the video”. He had locked the bedroom door before she woke up. The sexual abuse had continued from March until May 2015.
Her mother soon noticed something was wrong when her daughter seemed withdrawn and unhappy after the stayovers. The child told her mother about the sexual assault when asked, shocking the older woman. She was quick to confront her ex-husband over the phone. Initially, he denied it, but confessed later and promised he would not do it again. He also asked his ex-wife to not report the matter to the police and she eventually agreed as her daughter appeared distressed. She tried to prevent her daughter from seeing the man, but relented when she asked to see him.
The offences were revealed four years later in July 2019 when the mother went to get help from a family service centre for her daughter’s behavioural issues. During a meeting with the case worker, she admitted that her ex-husband had sexually assaulted their daughter. She filed a police report after being advised to do so and the man was arrested the same day. According to a psychiatrist from the Institute of Mental Health, the man was not found to have a mental disorder, nor was he unsound of mind at the time of the assault. The court also heard that the girl underwent a surgery in October 2015 to remove a plastic toy from her private parts. She said she had inserted it herself but her reasoning was not revealed in open court.
The man’s lawyer, Chong Xin Yi, stated that the man had stopped sexually abusing the girl in 2015, before the confrontation with his ex-wife. In fact, within the four years before the report was made, they had continued having a “good father and daughter relationship“, she added. She continued by saying the accused still feels guilty over his actions. “To date, he cannot forgive himself for what he has done. He is only heartened that she misses him, from notes and drawings she has given him.”
In sentencing, Justice Valerie Thean stated that, based on the victim’s statement, the impact of his sexual crimes were “incredibly substantial“. The accused’s sentence was backdated to 25th July 2019, the date he was remanded. The man could have been jailed up to 20 years, fined and/or caned for sexual assault by penetration of a minor under 14. For molesting a minor under 14, he could have been jailed for 5 years, fined, caned or penalised by all three.
As succinctly summarised by the judge; “He had abused his parental responsibility in the sanctity of a home, which should have been a safe place for a child to rest in.”
Sources: China Press, The Straits Times, Today Online
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