Father who raped three daughters is sentenced to 33 years in prison and caning

SINGAPORE – A father of seven who sexually abused four daughters, raped three of them and mistreated a son was sentenced to 33 years and two months in prison and 24 lashes on Friday (March 18).

This includes a seven-month prison sentence instead of 36 lashes, which, however, cannot be imposed on the man because 24 lashes is the legal maximum.

In handing down the verdict, Judge Tan Siong Thye described the case as “one of the worst cases of rape and sexual assault by penetration.” The man had exploited his daughters over a long period of time to satisfy his sexual perversion.

“For children, home is a sanctuary where they find parental love, warmth, security, protection, comfort, peace, harmony and serenity. The defendant destroyed the cherished values ​​of the victims’ sanctuary and turned their home into a hell on earth,” the judge said.

The man’s abuse of his children “paints a disturbing and tragic picture of the physical dominance the defendant exerted over the rest of his family,” he added.

The man, a 45-year-old freelance children’s activity instructor, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court on March 7 to seven charges, including aggravated rape, aggravated sexual abuse by penetration, aggravated sexual abuse and maltreatment of a child. All of these charges related to crimes against a daughter who was about 10 years old when the crimes began and is now 16 years old.

Of his seven children, a son (23) and a daughter (24) come from a previous marriage. He has five children with his current wife. These are four girls aged 12 to 19 and a 15-year-old boy. In order to protect the identity of the victims, neither of the two people can be named.

A further 26 charges that will be taken into account in determining his sentence relate to crimes against his three other daughters, his son and his wife (41). These include inciting his wife to get their daughter to give false information to the police in order to acquit him of the sexual offences, as well as attacking his wife.

“No reduction in sentence”

The prosecution had called for 32 years in prison and 24 lashes for the man, while his lawyer Ng Pei Qi of the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme called for 26 to 28 years in prison and the same number of lashes.

Ng said that even if there was overwhelming evidence against an offender, he should still be granted significant mitigating factors if he pleaded guilty, as he would have spared the victim the pain of having to relive the incident.

However, Judge Tan ruled that the man should not be given a “sentence reduction” because he had attempted to obstruct justice after suspecting that his daughters went to the police. He had been looking for ways to pass a lie detector test and wanted to deny the charges.

This was reminiscent of how he had told his wife to persuade one of the girls to lie about the sexual assault in 2015 so he could be exonerated, the judge said. He got away with the crime in 2015 and hoped to do so again in 2018.

He was even prepared to protest his innocence until he became aware of the “avalanche of evidence” against him, Judge Tan noted.

Children are denied food for days

On September 1, 2018, the man denied his four children food for four days because he was angry with two of his daughters who took their two younger siblings to the playground before finishing their chores.

He threw away all the food in the house and forbade his wife from cooking. He tied the large water bottles in the refrigerator so that his children could not reach them when he and the rest of the family went out to eat.

For four days, the four children lived on tap water and smuggled food, such as packets of chicken rice from their mother, who also hid biscuits and potato chips in her mailbox.

Sexual abuse of daughter

From 2008, the man lived with his family in an apartment in Ang Mo Kio before moving to an apartment in Canberra in November 2017. Between 2016 and 2018, the main victim was sexually abused by the man, mostly at night when his wife was at work.

Starting in 2018, he threatened to take the girl out of school if she didn’t have sex with him every day. This frightened the girl, as she thought she would be abused even more by him. She didn’t tell anyone about the acts, as she was afraid that no one would believe her.

In 2018, the man also performed “body checks” on this girl, then between 12 and 13 years old, and her two older sisters, then between 14 and 16 years old.

He had sexual intercourse with the youngest girl, pretended to clean her genitals, and then took a photograph of her. He then showed each of the three girls the photograph he had taken and instructed them on “how to properly clean themselves” after their period. He repeated the same act the same year, also supposedly to teach the girls how to properly clean themselves.

The last time the man abused the main victim was on November 16, 2018, in the master bedroom toilet. Her two older sisters asked her what happened as they found it strange that she had showered in the master bedroom toilet.

In tears, the girl told her siblings about the sexual abuse. A sister convinced the girl to file a police report and they decided to go to a police station far away so that they would not be found by the man.

They left the house after midnight on November 17, 2018, under the pretext of throwing away garbage. The girl was later taken to hospital, where she stayed for a week before moving to a children’s home for two weeks.

The man searched for his two daughters at three different police stations after they left, but could not find them. He then searched ten different websites to find out how to pass a lie detector test. He was arrested at 1:40 p.m. the same day and found to be sane and without any sexual perversions.

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