Two fathers who sexually abused daughters to be jailed, caned

SINGAPORE — Two men who sexually abused their daughters in two separate cases were sentenced to jail and caning on Thursday (June 30).

In the first case, a man had molested his daughter when she was just 12, touching her on the chest on several occasions over a 10-month period, claiming that he was stressed.

He was sentenced to four years and three months in jail, and five strokes of the cane for restraining and molesting his daughter, and for threatening his wife with a knife.

In the second case, a man committed various obscene acts on his two teenage stepdaughters, including making one of them masturbate him. He was sentenced to 29 months in jail and six strokes of the cane for sexual assault and for filming the teens in the shower.

None of the parties involved can be named to protect the victims.

The first father, a 43-year-old security guard, lived with his three children and mother-in-law in a Tampines flat. His wife was estranged from the family.

Some time in September 2014, while the rest of the family was sleeping, he sent a WhatsApp message to his daughter at 10pm, asking her to go to his bedroom. There in the dark, he hugged her forcefully from behind and touched her left breast over her bra for a while.

Over the next few months, he repeated the acts twice. She never struggled or called for help because she was afraid he would beat her up.

On June 29 last year, he messaged her in the afternoon, saying that he wanted to “sayang” her.

She rejected him, and when she still refused after he pleaded that it would be the last time, he asked her to delete all his messages.

Later that day, the girl’s grandmother saw that she had been crying, and found out what had happened. When the girl’s mother was told about this, she slapped the man, spat on him and hit him with a broom before he picked up a knife and chased her out of the house.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Kavita Uthrapathy said that there was no justification for what the man did, even though he claimed that he was under stress and that his wife was having an affair. She said: “There is the highest level of abuse of trust … (he) is the victim’s biological father and ought to have been protective of her.”

In the case of the second father, a 41-year-old lorry driver, the court heard that the sexual advances started shortly after the man married the victims’ mother in 2007 and moved into their four-room flat in Yishun.

In 2008, he hugged the older stepdaughter once when he was naked and they were alone at home. She was just 15 then. He told his wife that he could not control his desires. In 2010, he showed the older girl a video of herself showering.

A year later, the younger girl was sleeping in the living room when she felt him grab her hand and use it to masturbate himself. She was 16 then.

On another occasion in 2011, the younger girl saw her stepfather filming her in the toilet and informed her mother, who seized the man’s mobile phone and confronted him. DPP Uthrapathy said that the man admitted to being sexually aroused and told the police that he watched the video of her showering a number of times.

The girls’ mother and the man divorced in 2014, and the family lodged a police report after that.