February 25, 2025
SINGAPORE – A man coerced his 11-year-old stepdaughter into performing various sexual acts over a period of two months, and on one occasion even told her to trust him.
The man also told the girl to record a video of him and her mother having sex.
In sentencing the 29-year-old man on Feb 24, a High Court judge said it was “heartbreaking” that when instructed to record the act, the victim felt relieved, rather than repulsed, because it meant she was not going to be assaulted.
Justice Aidan Xu sentenced the man to 15 years’ jail and 12 strokes of the cane, saying that his heinous and depraved acts had robbed the victim of her innocence.
The man pleaded guilty to three charges: one count of aggravated rape, one count of sexual exploitation of a child, and one count of engaging in a sexual activity in the presence of a minor.
Another nine charges, for various sexual offences against the same victim, were taken into consideration for sentencing.
Justice Xu commended a tutor and a social worker who helped bring the sex abuse to light. “They saw and they acted,” he said.
In response to the judge’s questions, Deputy Public Prosecutor Kathy Chu said the victim, who is now 13 years old, is living with her mother and that no criminal action is being pursued against the mother.
The man, a fast-food chain worker, married the victim’s mother in July 2019.
He became stepfather to the victim and her two older brothers; the girl called him “papa”.
The girl’s brothers occupied the only bedroom in the flat.
The girl slept on the sofa in the living room, while the man and her mother slept on a mattress on the floor beside the sofa.
One night in November 2022, the man was having sex with the victim’s mother, but had to stop when the girl entered the living room.
Feeling frustrated at the interruption, the man watched a pornographic video while the victim’s mother was asleep next to him.
He exposed himself after he noticed that the girl was looking at him.
The man then told the victim to touch him, and grabbed her hand.
He forced her to perform sex acts on him, and after lying back down on the mattress, he stretched out his hand to grope her.
When she resisted, he told her to trust him.
After the incident, the man told the girl not to tell anyone else about what had happened, and said he did what he did to her only because she interrupted him and her mother.
A few days later, the man wanted to have sex with the victim’s mother, but she was asleep next to him and did not respond.
When he saw that the victim was awake on the sofa, he exposed himself and sent her a text message, asking if she wanted to “do it again”. She refused.
The man told the victim to watch him and touched her inappropriately. He then forced her to perform oral sex on him.
On another occasion, the man texted the victim and told her to record a video of him and her mother having sex.
He sent the victim a video of him having sex with her mother, to instruct her on how he wanted the act to be recorded.
Later that night, the girl hid under a blanket on the sofa and recorded the acts.
She sent the video to the man the next day, and deleted it from her phone.
The abuse stopped after the victim confided in her second brother about what their stepfather had done, and her brother told her that she could refuse the man.
In January 2023, the brother told his mother that the man had done something wrong to the victim.
After a discussion, the victim agreed to forgive the man to avoid breaking the family apart, and he continued living with them.
On May 11, 2023, while the victim was attending tuition at a social service agency, her tutor noticed cuts on the girl’s forearm that seemed to be self-inflicted.
The tutor was not convinced by the victim’s claim that she had been scratched by cats, and took her to speak to a social worker.
The girl told the social worker that she cut her forearm as she felt worthless and useless and was stressed about her studies. The victim also said she had thought about committing suicide.
After learning from both the mother and the girl that the man had forced the victim to perform sexual acts, the social worker took the victim to KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
Hospital officials later made a police report.
The man was arrested on May 12, 2023, and has been on remand in custody since then.