Man jailed for 28 years after raping stepdaughter for years | The New Paper
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Man jailed for 28 years after raping stepdaughter for years

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For seven years, a warehouse assistant sexually abused his stepdaughter, starting when she was as young as six or seven years old, the High Court heard yesterday.

It was only when she was 10 that she learnt from her Primary 5 classmates who went for sex education classes that the various acts were wrong; her parents had disapproved of her attending the classes and had opted out of them.

The girl continued to suffer in silence until she decided, when she was 12, that she could no longer endure the abuse when her stepfather tried to sodomise her while she was getting ready for school.

Yesterday, the 41-year-old man was sentenced to 28 years' jail and 24 strokes of the cane, after he pleaded guilty to one charge of aggravated statutory rape and two charges of aggravated sexual assault by penetration.

The parties were not named to protect the identity of the victim.

The court heard that the girl was two when her mother married the man.

The couple went on to have another four children.

The family lived in a one-room Housing Board flat and usually slept together in the living room.

Early one morning in 2012, the man woke his stepdaughter up and touched her sexually.

He started sodomising her in 2013 when she was seven, before moving on to raping her and making her perform oral sex on him in 2014.

She complied with his depraved demands as she was fearful of antagonising the man, who slapped and rebuked her when she shouted in pain, the court heard.

After realising that the acts were wrong, she told him to stop but he persisted.

On the morning of Jan 17, 2018, after resisting the man's latest attempt to violate her, she confided in her maternal aunt about the abuse over the phone on her way to school.

In school, a teacher saw the girl crying and took her to see the school counsellor.

A police report was made on the same day.

Yesterday, Deputy Public Prosecutor Chee Ee Ling said the man's "deviant conduct was nothing short of abhorrent".

"The victim suffered untold trauma and misery as a result of the multitude of sexual assaults," said the prosecutor.

The girl, now 14, still has flashbacks of the abuse, worries that people will judge her for what the man did to her and finds it hard to trust males, the court heard.

COURT & CRIME