A 50-year-old man repeatedly raped his stepdaughter over the course of six years, starting when she was 11.
After he pled guilty to two charges of aggravated statutory rape, the High Court sentenced him to 28 years’ jail.
Another 19 charges were taken into consideration.
According to TODAY, the victim’s mother married the man back in 2008. Living in a two-bedroom flat together, the couple had a son in 2009.
That same year, she found a job in Singapore requiring her to work in shifts. The night shifts started from 7.30pm or 11.30pm, continuing till the next morning.
The victim herself lived in Malaysia with her maternal grandmother until she turned 10 in 2012. She then moved to Singapore and began living with her mother, stepbrother, the man and his mother.
The elderly woman was in one bedroom while the victim’s family was in the master bedroom, where they slept on two mattresses on the floor.
One of them was shared by the stepbrother and the victim, with the couple using the other.
The man first began touching her inappropriately in bed after the victim turned 11 in 2013.
He would occasionally exchange places with his son to sleep next to her while his wife worked the night shift.
The man then waited until his son and stepdaughter went to bed. He covered her face with a blanket to prevent her from seeing him, before raping her.
During the assault, the victim pretended to be asleep in fear of being harmed if she retaliated.
On another night in 2014, the man sexually abused and raped his stepdaughter again, who was 12 at the time.
Between 2013 and 2015, he would also make her perform oral sex on him. He asked her to play a “guessing game”, blindfolding her with a towel before prompting her to guess what he had put in her mouth.
In 2019, the victim was 17 when she started resisting his advances by looking at him, TODAY reports.
Sometime in March of that year, the man sent her a message stating, “I want you to be my lady forever”.
When told she was his daughter, he said they had different surnames and threatened to divorce her mother if she informed her about everything.
That same month, the man stopped his assault one night when she woke up and looked at him. He claimed he was “merely playing with her” after she confronted him.
Overhearing the confrontation, her mother did not report him but warned the man against repeating his behaviour.
The victim eventually informed her boyfriend of the abuse on 11 Sep 2019, who told her mother.
She confronted her husband, who denied his actions. The day after, he met her in public to warn her against reporting him.
Cautioning her to “think carefully”, he said her stepbrother would not have a father if anything happened to him.
However, when the victim said he had raped her, he slapped her, doing so at least four times during the heated conversation.
He suggested that she could tell her mother what she said was not true, and they could resume being a “happy family again”.
The victim then informed her mother that he slapped her, causing them to approach the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware) the next day.
They were referred to the police, who arrested the man on the same day.
According to the prosecution, the incidents caused the victim to experience nightmares, contemplate suicide, and commit self-harm.
Eventually, Justice Pang Khang Chau sentenced the man to 28 years’ jail. He considered several aggravating factors, such as his abuse of the victim’s trust as well as her age and vulnerability.
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Featured image by MS News.
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