\n<\/p>\n
SINGAPORE: A man with five daughters and stepdaughters was sentenced to 16-and-a-half years’ jail and 22 strokes of the cane on Thursday (Oct 8) for sexually abusing four of them.<\/p>\n
The earliest known victim, who was molested in 2008, did not lodge a police report because her mother did not believe her and she feared the police would not believe her either.<\/p>\n
The man was only arrested in November 2024, a year after his final assault against one of his stepdaughters, aged eight to nine at the time.<\/p>\n
The 44-year-old Singaporean man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the victims, pleaded guilty to one charge of aggravated statutory rape and two charges of aggravated molestation.<\/p>\n
Another seven similar charges were taken into consideration.<\/p>\n
The court heard that the man had eight children, a mix of biological and stepchildren, across three marriages. Five of whom are female.<\/p>\n
The earliest known victim, identified as V2 in court documents, was the man’s stepdaughter from his first marriage.<\/p>\n
In 2008, when the offender was still married to his second wife, he molested V2 when she was 13.<\/p>\n
Her mother did not believe her allegation. Afraid that the police would not believe her either, V2 did not lodge a police report.<\/p>\n
The next known incident involved V1, the offender’s biological daughter from his first marriage.<\/p>\n
She was 17 when he molested her in 2020.<\/p>\n
He molested V1 in a room after placing his 10-month-old daughter on V1’s back.<\/p>\n
V1 was shocked but did not lodge a police report as her family did not want her to do so.<\/p>\n
She feared that she would be disowned or kicked out of the house if she went against their wishes by reporting her father.<\/p>\n
On Mar 1, 2024, a child protection officer lodged a police report about the offence linked to V1, saying that V1 was seeing a psychiatrist and went to hospital for suicidal ideation.<\/p>\n
CNA has contacted the police on why the man was not arrested earlier.<\/p>\n
The offender also molested V3, his biological daughter with his second wife.<\/p>\n
After he divorced V3’s mother in May 2016, he remained in contact with V3 and had her sleep over at his flat during the school holidays.<\/p>\n
Sometime in November 2021, when V3 was 13, she stayed over at her father’s flat intending to visit her paternal grandparents the next day.<\/p>\n
Usually, she slept with the other children, but this time her father said there were problems with the air-conditioning.<\/p>\n
He therefore had her sleep in his room that night with other family members.<\/p>\n
While the man’s third wife was busy performing other tasks outside the room that night, the offender lay down next to V3 and molested her.<\/p>\n
V3 was shocked and froze, instinctively pretending that she was asleep.<\/p>\n
The man continued molesting V3, stopping only when his wife called him.<\/p>\n
V3 initially did not lodge a police report as she was afraid. She did so eventually on Jan 1, 2022.<\/p>\n
Despite the police report, the offender continued his sexual abuse, targeting V4, his stepdaughter from his third marriage.<\/p>\n
She considered the man a father figure and called him “daddy”.<\/p>\n
In 2020 or 2021, when V4 was five to seven years old, the offender molested her.<\/p>\n
He did it again multiple times in 2023, when V4 was eight to nine years old.<\/p>\n
Sometime in 2023, the man was playing a game with V4 on a PlayStation when he felt aroused by accidental contact with the child.<\/p>\n
He made the girl perform a sex act.<\/p>\n
A few weeks after this, he was wrestling with her in the bedroom when he began molesting her. He eventually stopped because he “felt bad”.<\/p>\n
On Nov 14, 2024, V4 was watching TikTok videos on her phone in a room.<\/p>\n
From where she was, she could look into the master bedroom where the door was ajar.<\/p>\n
The offender stood close to the door of the master bedroom and engaged in a sex act while looking at V4.<\/p>\n
V4 felt that what he was doing was wrong and recorded a video of her stepfather, which she showed to a friend on TikTok.<\/p>\n
Her friend told her to call the police, but V4 refused, as she did not want anything to happen to her family.<\/p>\n
V4’s friend, however, told a teacher about what happened and the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) was notified.<\/p>\n
A child protection officer lodged a police report on Nov 15, 2024. The man was finally arrested later that same day.<\/p>\n
He was assessed at the Institute of Mental Health and was found not to have any mental disorder.<\/p>\n
Deputy Public Prosecutors Sean Teh and Ariel Tan sought 16-and-a-half years’ jail and 22 strokes of the cane.<\/p>\n
Mr Teh said this case involved “grave sexual exploitation” of four of the offender’s children from 2008 to 2023.<\/p>\n
The most serious of these were against V4, who was subjected to repeated sexual assault over a prolonged period.<\/p>\n
The offender also had past convictions from 1998 to 2009, which include stealing a vehicle and committing an obscene act in a public place.<\/p>\n
Justice Andre Maniam said sexual offences in the family context are particularly troubling.<\/p>\n
“Not only do they often involve abuse of position and breach of trust, the offences may cause the victims lasting psychological harm and damage relationships within the family,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Given the nature of the offences and their setting, offences might not be reported until later on or not at all.”<\/p>\n
For aggravated statutory rape, the man could have been jailed for between eight and 20 years and given at least 12 strokes of the cane.<\/p>\n
For aggravated molestation, he could have been jailed for up to five years, fined, caned, or given any combination of these punishments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
SINGAPORE: A man with five daughters and stepdaughters was sentenced to 16-and-a-half years’ jail and 22 strokes of the cane on Thursday (Oct 8) for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":80194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=91315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/80194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}