10 years’ jail, caning for part-time musician who raped 12-year-old girl
SINGAPORE — The young girl thought of him as an uncle, but he snuck her to his office, plied her with alcohol and raped her there.
The man sexually abused the 12-year-old girl on two consecutive days in 2015 before his brother caught them drinking at his workplace.
On Tuesday (May 28), the man — a recent divorcee with two children of his own — was sentenced in the High Court to 10 years’ jail and six strokes of the cane.
The 39-year-old part-time musician pleaded guilty to one count of statutory rape. Two other charges of aggravated sexual assault by penetration and statutory rape were taken into consideration for sentencing.
Although the man had not threatened the girl, his offences were nonetheless “very serious”, Justice Chan Seng Onn said.
“You have taken advantage of this young vulnerable girl who was entrusted to your care by her mother. You have corrupted her sexually,” he said.
The man cannot be named to protect his victim’s identity, as he is the brother of her mother’s long-time boyfriend.
He will begin serving the sentence after he finishes serving his current prison term of seven-and-a-half years for drugs-related offences.
GIRL’S MOTHER TRUSTED HIM
The man knew the girl, who is now 16, since she was about seven years old.
The girl addressed him as “baba”, and the two became closer in mid-2015 when she was 12. They would often chat over the phone without her mother or the mother’s boyfriend knowing.
On Sept 21, 2015, her mother made a missing person report after the girl ran away from home. She heard from the girl’s friend that her daughter had been sighted in Boon Keng, and went there with her boyfriend and his brother to look for her.
When they found her, her mother informed the police, who told them to go to the police station the next day for an interview.
The girl told the man privately that she did not want to go home with her mother. He then told the older woman that he was hungry and would grab supper at McDonald’s.
When her daughter said she was also hungry, the mother told her to go along to McDonald’s and wait for her there.
Early the next morning, the girl’s mother could not find them at the fast-food outlet and tried to reach the man on his mobile phone, to no avail.
She then returned to her boyfriend’s house to wait for them.
Police officers found the girl and the man in the vicinity of Bukit Gombak in the afternoon. When the officers called the girl’s mother, she told them to arrest the man, but he requested to speak to her and told her not to worry.
The older woman replied that she trusted him as he was her future brother-in-law, and asked the officers to let them go. She returned home with her boyfriend, but they were unable to contact the man again later that evening.
The man had seized the chance to take the girl to his office, whose location was redacted from court documents.
They drank some beer before lying down on a mattress and undressing. She performed oral sex on him and he proceeded to rape her.
The following morning, he bought some beer, which they drank before having sex in the office.
The girl’s mother made a police report against the man that morning, while her boyfriend was out looking for them. He found them in the man’s office, where he spied love bites on the girl’s neck and suspected they had engaged in sexual acts.
The man’s actions came to light after the girl was taken to Geylang Neighbourhood Police Centre for an interview.
For raping a minor under the age of 14, the man could have been jailed for up to 20 years, and fined or caned.
