Man’s claim of botched penis enlargement against sex abuse charges ‘inconsistent’

SINGAPORE — A 42-year-old man was convicted of sexually assaulting his daughter on Wednesday (Feb 15), after a High Court judge shot down his story that a botched penis enlargement procedure made it physically impossible for him to commit these obscene acts.

Judicial Commissioner Aedit Abdullah was unconvinced that the food stall assistant’s daughter would spin a story to spite him for lecturing her over a costly handphone bill, or that his ex-wife would do likewise to get a divorce.

Giving his brief reasons for convicting the man — who cannot be named to protect the victim’s identity — the judge said he found the daughter’s testimony “unusually convincing”. Even on the stand, she was not shaken and had given a consistent account, he noted.

The man had claimed trial to sexually assaulting his daughter, who was then 11, in their Choa Chu Kang home between the end of 2011 and April 2014. She is the oldest of his three children.

He faced 10 charges, including committing an indecent act with a child, sexual assault by penetration and outraging the modesty of a minor under the age of 14. Most of the offences were committed in the master bedroom, where his daughter would use the computer for school projects.

During the trial, the daughter testified that she had kept silent about the abuse as she was afraid of wrecking her parents’ marriage. But she was pushed over the edge after the last incident on April 15, 2014, and felt that she could not allow her mother to remain married to her father any longer.

The following day, she sent a long WhatsApp message to her mother, listing the various acts of molest and abuse over the years.

“Dad always (says) he loves me ... but Dad does things that are not right to me,” she told her mother. “I do not want to go home ... I feel afraid ... I feel that I am dirty.”

At her mother’s encouragement, the girl returned home. Her mother threw her father out of the house a day later, and subsequently made a police report, as well as filed for divorce.

During the trial, the defence had played up the fact that the rest of the family had been at home during the offences, making it impossible that no one had noticed anything amiss.

In rebuttal, Deputy Public Prosecutor April Phang said: “It is entirely expected for one to assume that their child would be safe with their biological parent, as child sexual abuse is a heinous aberration to the normal parental instinct to care and protect their child.”

The prosecution added that the man had deliberately enlarged his penis after abusing his daughter to “exonerate” himself from the charges. “The accused deliberately changed the appearance of his penis in order to support his defence that it was ‘improbable’ or impossible for his penis to have penetrated (his daughter), as well as to paint (her) as a liar by casting doubts on her description of his penis at the time of the offences,” she said.

The court will pass sentence on March 20. The man is out on S$100,000 bail.