SINGAPORE — Two years after he was cleared of raping and sexually assaulting his girlfriend’s teenage daughter, Mohd Ariffan Mohd Hassan’s case has concluded with the Court of Appeal upholding the acquittal on Thursday (Aug 8).

The apex court agreed with Senior Judge Kan Ting Chiu that the prosecution had not proven the charges — two counts of sexual assault by penetration, two counts of rape and one count of aggravated molestation — beyond a reasonable doubt.

They also agreed with the High Court judge’s assessment that the girl was not a convincing witness as her story was inconsistent.

Ariffan, who is now 59, was accused of committing the offences in his flat and in a prime mover between 2009 and 2011, when the girl was between 15 and 16 years old.

She cannot be named due to a court gag order to protect her identity.

Ariffan, a crane operator at the time, denied committing the offences, saying that he did not drive a prime mover during that period. 

Following the High Court acquittal, the prosecution — led by Deputy Attorney-General Hri Kumar Nair and Deputy Public Prosecutor Charlene Tay — appealed against the decision.

THURSDAY’S DECISION

On Thursday, the appeal judges — Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, Judge of Appeal Judith Prakash and Judge of Appeal Andrew Phang — ruled that Ariffan’s alleged victim, who is now 25 years old, was not an unusually convincing witness on several grounds. 

Her allegations were not corroborated by family members or other witnesses, they added.

The girl had kept silent about the alleged offences for some time. It was only sometime between 2010 and early 2011 that she told her boyfriend, who persuaded her to tell her mother.

Her mother did not take action, and a police report was only lodged more than a year later, in December 2012, after the girl had told her brother.

In a 47-page written judgment, Justice Prakash said that while sexual assault victims have good reasons to delay reporting the offences, the judges were troubled by these points:

• There was a major inconsistency regarding the period during which the offences allegedly took place. The girl told the police that the rapes ended at the beginning of 2011, and that the sexual assaults ended by around June that same year. However, she told her brother that Ariffan raped her two to three times a week, right up to December 2012.

• She also told her brother that the assaults and rape took place on nights when she had gone out alone with Ariffan, between 10pm and midnight. But her mother — Ariffan’s lover — testified that such outings were infrequent. Also, the family often took trips to Johor Baru and Ariffan worked long hours that occasionally stretched to the early mornings, so there were few opportunities for Ariffan to have taken the girl out alone.

• Evidence from the girl and her boyfriend showed that she was very reluctant to say anything about these alleged offences, and that she only told her mother when the boy pressured her to do so.

THE PRIME MOVER

In relation to the alleged molestation and rape that took place in the prime mover, the prosecution relied on seven parking summonses as evidence, and noted that the girl’s family was able to describe the prime mover.

This, they argued, proved that Ariffan regularly drove the prime mover to their flat and took the family around in it.

However, the appeal judges noted that:

• The summonses, which were issued at a location close to their flat, did not prove Ariffan drove the prime mover home. 

• When the girl gave her police statements in Dec 2012 and July 2013, she did not say that she was sexually assaulted in the vehicle.

• They could not rule out the possibility that the girl’s relatives were able to describe the prime mover only because investigating officers had shown them a photograph of it after they lodged the police report.

• The girl only said that she was sexually assaulted in the prime mover after an officer showed her two photographs of prime movers owned by Ariffan’s employer.

• Ariffan’s employer Sim Hock Beng gave testimony that contradicted the brother’s and family’s evidence. Mr Sim said that Ariffan did not drive the prime mover at all, and regularly drove his own car to and from work. He also said the vehicle’s back seat was dirty and used to store gear, which meant sexual relations could not have taken place there.

After the hearing, Ariffan hugged his lawyers — Mr Abraham Vergis from Providence Law Asia and Ms Sadhana Rai from the Law Society Pro Bono Services — and shook their hands.