On February 26, 2020, it would seem that justice has prevailed for a now 16-year old girl whose 50-year old father was finally sentenced to 24 years in jail after molesting and raping her. The father, who cannot be named to keep the victim safe, along with his wife and two children, are all Chinese nationals living in Singapore with permanent residency (PR) status. They were living together in an HDB flat, while the father worked as a technician during the time that the incidents of molest and rapes took place.
It was back in October 2018 when the victim’s co-form teacher became concerned and decided to speak to her after hearing that she wanted to run away from home. Eventually, the teenager spoke out about her father touching her inappropriately, which prompted the teacher to inform the police.
The harrowing details of the events that took place were brought up in court. The father, who was said to have a ‘strained relationship’ with his wife for several years, was sleeping in a sectioned-portion of the living room while the wife slept in the master bedroom. The first time he molested his daughter was in the earlier portion of 2018 when she was just 13-years old. The first episode occurred while the daughter was on the computer. The father hugged her from behind and put his hands inside her shirt while he touched her breasts. Without knowing what else to do, she just chose to walk away.
His next few advances towards his daughter became “more aggravated.” He demanded that she lay next to him on his bed at night while the mom and brother were asleep. She complied “out of fear” and would do as told but with her back towards her father. He also began hitting and slapping her, instilling fear in the young girl in order to make her do as he wished. Eventually, she found the courage to tell her older brother about what was happening, but he didn’t offer any other assistance aside from advising her to ‘reject him the next time it happened.’
Sadly for the girl, court documents showed that her father became more emboldened and the molestation worsened. He began kissing her using his tongue and forcing her to ‘perform acts on him.’ It was in March of 2018 when her father first raped her. It was early in the morning on a Sunday when the girl woke up early for an art class. Again, her father touched her inappropriately and finally decided to rape her that morning, using a condom he had in the flat. He even warned her not to shout if she felt pain as to not wake the other family members.
Members of the court also heard that the girl, who was still a virgin when the first incident of rape happened, did feel pain but didn’t make any sounds because she was too afraid of what her father might do. She eventually got an itch from the incident, telling her father, who bought her vaginal wash to deal with it. Then in April of 2018, just a few weeks after the first rape, the father raped the daughter again, except this time he didn’t use a condom. Apparently, after the second rape, the daughter threw her dirty underwear in a laundry basket in their home without washing them so the father decided to wash them himself.
To make matters worse, the daughter ended up missing a period, prompting the father to buy a pregnancy test in fear that she was pregnant, but the test came back negative. When questioned by the police about his choice to not use a condom the second time around, he explained that it was too “troublesome” to retrieve one from the master bedroom, believing that his daughter was “safe” due to what he knew of her menstrual cycle.
Before a third rape could happen, the father had been arrested and he has since pleaded guilty to ‘two charges of rape, with eight other charges of molest taken into consideration.’ The prosecution team, made up of Deputy Public Prosecutors April Phang, Andrew Low, and Jamie Phang, explained in court, “Instead of offering the victim the care, protection and guidance as is expected of a father, the accused abused his parental authority, and exploited his daughter’s fear of him, for his own sexual pleasure.”
Because the offender is 50-years old, he can no longer be canned, so prosecution sought for a 23-year imprisonment and another year ‘in lieu of 24 strokes of the cane.’ Justice Aedit Abdullah decided to give him 24 years in jail without any additional jail time given in lieu of caning since he didn’t feel it was necessary.
It was also found that the daughter, who underwent psychiatric assessment, had only obeyed her father purely out of fear. And since her assessment, it has also been noted that she still feels breathless for no reason at all. She has been going to therapy sessions with her school counsellor in order to deal with her horrific ordeal.