A 50-year-old man was sentenced to 24 years in jail on Feb. 26, 2020 for raping his biological daughter.

The man, who cannot be named due to a gag order imposed to protect the identity of the victim, first began touching his daughter in early 2018, when she was 13.

The victim is currently 16 years old.

According to court documents, the man was working as a technician at the time of the offences, living with his wife and two children in a four-room HDB flat.

All family members are Chinese nationals with Singapore permanent residency (PR).

First molested her when she was 13

The court heard that the victim's father had had a strained relationship with his wife for many years, and the two of them had adopted separate sleeping arrangements.

While the wife slept in the master bedroom, the man shared sleeping quarters with his children in a partitioned area of the living room.

Harbouring sexual intentions for his daughter, he first molested her when she was 13 years old, court documents read.

In early 2018, while his daughter was using the computer, he suddenly hugged her from the back and placed his hands under her shirt, touching her breasts.

The victim was afraid and didn't know what to do, and ended up walking away.

Following this incident, the man grew bolder, and his sexual advances towards the victim became more aggravated, such as demanding her to lay beside him while the other family members were still asleep.

The victim usually complied out of fear, but lay beside her father with her back facing away from him.

In the past, the man disciplined her by beating her with a cane-like glue stick or slapping her, causing her to be afraid of antagonising him.

The victim told her elder brother about their father touching her inappropriately sometime in Feb. 2018.

While the brother sensed that the victim was scared, he only told her to reject him the next time it happened, and did not render her any further assistance.

The sexual advances only grew bolder, as the victim's father went on to kiss her on the lips, sticking his tongue in her mouth, and even making her perform sexual acts on him in subsequent months.

Raped his daughter twice

He first raped his daughter sometime in Mar. 2018, on a Sunday morning when she woke up early for her art class.

After inappropriately touching the victim, he went to take a condom, and wore it before raping the victim.

He also told her not to shout if she felt pain, so that the rest of the family would not be woken up.

The girl was a virgin and felt some pain, but did not show her emotions as she was too fearful of her father, the court heard.

After this, the girl felt an itch in her private parts and told her father, who bought her a vaginal wash.

Sometime in Apr. 2018, he raped his daughter for the second time, without a condom.

He later found out his daughter did not wash her underwear, which still had his stains on it. It was left in a laundry basket in their home.

He quickly went back home to wash the victim's underwear himself.

When the victim missed her period, he grew worried and bought her a pregnancy test kit. She tested negative.

He later told police that he did not use protection as he found it "troublesome" to get it from the master bedroom, and thought it would be "safe" based on his knowledge of the victim's menstrual cycle.

Offences came to light after teacher found out

The obscenities only came to light after the victim's co-form teacher spoke to her in Oct. 2018, when the victim wanted to run away from home.

After much probing, the victim revealed to her teacher that her father had touched her inappropriately.

The police were alerted to the case, and the father was arrested afterwards.

The man pleaded guilty to two charges of rape, with eight other charges of molest taken into consideration.

A psychiatric assessment of the victim found that she had obeyed her father due to her fear towards him, feeling that she had no choice but to do so.

The report also stated that the victim sometimes felt breathless for no reason, and has been seeing her school counsellor.

Jailed for 24 years

Deputy Public Prosecutors April Phang, Andrew Low, and Jamie Phang pushed for a sentence of at least 23 years' imprisonment and an extra year in lieu of 24 strokes of the cane.

"Instead of offering the victim the care, protection and guidance as is expected of a father, the accused abused his parental authority, and exploited his daughter's fear of him, for his own sexual pleasure," the prosecution argued.

According to CNA, the defence counsel asked for 20 years' jail, with no additional term in lieu of caning.

He said that his client had no previous convictions, and that there were only two aggravating factors in the case, which consisted of the youth of the victim and the accused's abuse of authority.

Justice Aedit Abdullah sentenced him to 24 years in jail, and did not impose an additional jail term in lieu of caning as he felt the circumstances did not call for it.

For each count of rape, the man could have been jailed up to 20 years, fined, or both.

As he is 50 years old, the man cannot be caned.

Top image via Matthias Ang