Teenager who repeatedly raped his stepsister at the age of seven is to be sent to a reformatory

SINGAPORE: He was just 15 years old when he raped his seven-year-old stepsister six times in 2020, including in her own home.

The perpetrator, now 19 years old, threatened to hit the victim if she told anyone about his crime.

The girl suffered in silence before finally telling her biological brother, identified in court documents as W1, about her ordeal on August 16, 2022.

On July 22, the perpetrator was sentenced to a minimum of six months’ correctional treatment after pleading guilty to one count each of rape and sexual assault. Seven other charges were taken into account in the sentencing.

Young offenders sent to reform school are held in a center and must undergo a strict regimen, which may include foot exercises and counseling.

Due to a news blackout to protect the victim’s identity, his name cannot be mentioned.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Gladys Lim said the victim’s widowed mother married the perpetrator’s father in February 2019.

From June of the same year, the perpetrator lived with the victim and her family in an apartment in Woodlands from Friday to Sunday and during school holidays. Eleven people lived in the apartment, including the victim and her grandfather.

On school days, the perpetrator lived with his biological mother in an apartment in Ang Mo Kio.

At some point in December 2020, he was sitting on a bed in a room of the Woodlands apartment watching television when the victim came over and lay down next to him.

Then he became aroused and asked her to perform sexual acts with him and she complied with his request.

The prosecutor said: “This was the first time the defendant had performed such a sexual act on the victim. The victim remained silent while the defendant did this because she did not know what to do.”

“The defendant then told the victim that he would hit her if she did not keep the incidents between them secret.”

After this incident, the perpetrator abused her several times in the apartment and in the nearby elevator shed over a period of more than a month.

The prosecutor said he would seek opportunities to be alone with the victim to achieve this, such as staying with her when other family members left the Woodlands apartment to run errands.

When the perpetrator’s father died in mid-2021, the victim’s mother asked him and her other stepchildren to move out of the Woodlands apartment so that their own mother could care for them.

The victim was in the living room of the Woodlands apartment at approximately 10:00 pm on August 16, 2022 and refused to go to bed despite being told to do so by her mother and W1.

The girl later told W1 that the perpetrator had sexually abused her. W1 then alerted the mother, the court heard.

The prosecutor said: “(The victim) burst into tears when she told them what the defendant had done to her. She said she was glad that the defendant had since moved out of the Woodlands apartment so she did not have to be afraid to face him.”

Her mother alerted the police on August 17, 2022. – The Straits Times/ANN