A man who raped his daughter for about seven-and-a-half years was jailed for 28 years and sentenced to 24 strokes of the cane on Monday (26 April).
The 44-year-old Singapore permanent resident had also molested his daughter’s best friend when he came by to hang out with her.
By his own count, the man had raped his daughter, now 13, between 10 and 20 times, and forced her to perform oral sex on him even more times. Both man and daughter cannot be named to protect the victim’s identity.
Sentencing the man from the European Union, Justice Mavis Chionh noted four aggravating factors to his offence: the vulnerability of the young victim, the man’s abuse of his position of authority and trust, the premeditation and grooming of the victim, and that the sex acts were unprotected.
“I should add that the tenderness of the victim’s years and the pathos of her vulnerability are obvious from the (statement of facts). At the start …she was a young girl afraid of showering alone. At the tail end, she was by all accounts still a young girl afraid to return to her room to sleep because she found the sounds of her room fan weird. The greatest tragedy in this case is that she (was) robbed of her childhood innocence by her own father”.
She noted that the prosecution told the court that even today, the daughter continues to write letters to her father to tell him that she loves him.
“This is the other great tragedy in this case that the victim (was) preyed upon by the person meant to protect her,” she added .
As for the mitigation, Justice Chionh took into account the man’s plea of guilt, which spared the victim the trauma of having to testify in court. She did not assign mitigating weight to the man being diagnosed with pedophilic disorder or that he had no criminal history, given the lengthy period he had been abusing his daughter. His offences were committed from 2011 to 2019.
