Singapore dad pleads guilty to sexually abusing daughter from age 3, raping her from 9

A man has pleaded guilty in the Singapore High Court to multiple counts of sexually assaulting and raping his young daughter for a period of up to eight years.

On Friday, he was charged with three counts of rape of a minor, and a further 19 charges will be considered at sentencing, including another four charges of rape and three charges of sexual assault by penetration.

At the time, the 44-year-old permanent resident from Europe was employed in Singapore as a product manager. He cannot be named in order to protect his victims’ identities.

The court heard that the man and his wife, who has since divorced him, moved to Singapore in 2010 and took up residence in a rented condominium with their young daughter.

When his wife was not at home, he began abusing his daughter at the end of 2011 when she was just three years old.

He claimed she had seen people drowning on television and had grown afraid of showering alone, so to comfort her he started showering with her and became aroused. This was when he began to sexually abuse her.

The court was told that while the girl’s mother was at work, her father showed her pornography, including videos purporting to show a father and daughter having sex.

When he forced himself on her, she said no but he told her just to try it for a few minutes and the assaults continued, turning into rape by the time she was nine.

She never told anyone what was happening to her as she did not want her parents to divorce over the matter.

When the girl’s best friend, a nine-year-old foreigner who lived in the same condominium, came to play, her father kissed her friend on the lips and told her to keep it a secret. Once, he molested both girls at the same time. Eventually, the friend stopped coming to play.

The abuse was finally discovered when her friend was vacationing with her family in their home country. While there, before taking her first communion, her friend had to confess her sins to a priest.

When the family returned to Singapore, her parents took her to lodge a police report.

On July 1, 2019, police officers went to the man’s condo. His daughter, who was alone at the time, admitted that her father had repeatedly abused her sexually. Later that evening, her father was arrested.

He was examined by the Institute of Mental Health and diagnosed with a paedophilic disorder.

In court, the father admitted to raping his daughter between 10 and 20 times. He also admitted he had forced her to perform oral sex on him more often than he raped her.

Deputy public prosecutor Yvonne Poon told the court that the father had fallen utterly short in his duty as his daughter’s guardian and protector. She is seeking a prison sentence of 30 years and 24 strokes of the cane.

“She tolerated years of abuse despite knowing what the accused did to her was wrong and disliking it,” she said. “She obeyed him each time and she continues to write him letters now, to tell him that she loves and misses him.”

Defence counsel Amarjit Singh Sidhu told the court that the father “concedes that what he did was wrong”.

He is seeking a prison sentence of 24 to 26 years.

Sentence will be passed by High Court judge Mavis Chionh on April 19.