71-year-old man on trial for allegedly insulting his then teenage stepdaughter’s modesty
The 71-year-old man has claimed trial to one charge of insulting the modesty of the teenager, who was his step-daughter at the time of the alleged offence.
SINGAPORE — A man allegedly asked his then stepdaughter for permission to commit an indecent act. When she protested, asking how he could do that when he was married to her mother, he apparently told the teenager that her mother’s breasts were small.
The pest control technician, who is now 71, has claimed trial in the State Courts on one count of insulting the then Secondary 3 student’s modesty over the incident, which was alleged to have occurred on June 21, 2017. He cannot be named to protect the identity of his alleged victim, who is no longer his stepdaughter.
His charge sheet stated that he had insulted the modesty of the girl by telling her in Malay: “Daddy dreamt about you last night”, “please, lah, daddy cannot control it”, “mama’s breasts are small, daddy doesn’t feel satisfied” and also describing the act he wanted to commit.
The girl’s mother, a former hawker stall assistant who married the accused in 2013 and divorced him in 2019, was the first to take the stand to testify in the trial on Wednesday (Feb 5).
The housewife said that the incident happened at their Woodlands flat at night when she was out delivering wedding invitations on behalf of her brother whose child was getting married.
When she returned home that night, she recalled that her daughter told her: “Mama, I am scared. (The accused) came to my room and wanted to suck my nipple.”
The mother told the court that she then tried to calm her daughter, asked her if she was “really very sure” of what he had done, and told her to be patient because she would “find some ways to rectify” the matter, such as living elsewhere.
Ten minutes after their 20-minute conversation, she said that she questioned her then-husband, who reacted: “You believe her? Whatever your daughter said?”
He then barged into his stepdaughter’s room and scolded her with vulgarities, as well as calling her “rude” while the teenager kept quiet.
His ex-wife testified: “He did not admit (to his alleged conduct). He said he didn’t do (what he was accused of)... When I pressured him, he said he was just fooling around.”
The matter blew over at that time, as the mother did not make a police report.
When Deputy Public Prosecutor Kevin Ho asked why she did not involve the police, she said that she did not want to disrupt her daughter’s studies as she was taking many exam papers at that time.
She then clarified that her daughter was taking religious classes since it was the June school holidays. The tests were conducted after the religious lessons.
When defence lawyer Ng Kwong Loong was cross-examining her, he asked if religious lessons were more important to her than her daughter’s safety. In response, she said: “Of course it is (my daughter’s) safety.”
The police learnt of the alleged incident only in 2018 in the course of investigating a complaint by the mother alleging that the accused man had physically abused her.
In 2015, she also accused him of abusing her, which resulted in her leaving the house as she applied for a personal protection order against him. After that, she returned home to give him another chance.
As part of the 2018 investigations, the police interviewed her daughter, son and brother.
Her daughter’s interview lasted about two hours, and the mother said that she found out afterwards that the daughter had told the police about the incident of the indecent request.
The ex-wife said that the accused later tried to persuade her to withdraw the case, thinking that she was the one who had filed the police report.
He had even told her what to say, suggesting that she say she was jealous of him for taking a woman home. She did not elaborate on that incident.
The court also heard that the mother had never really grown comfortable with her then-husband’s behaviour around her daughter.
“If it was not of utmost importance, I would not go out and leave my daughter alone with (the accused),” she said. “I didn’t want anything bad or unpleasant to happen between my husband and my daughter because they were stepdaughter and father.”
She also noticed that there was something strange about him, in that he would knock on the door whenever her daughter was taking a shower and would not allow her daughter to close her bedroom door even if the girl was alone in the bedroom, she said.
“I know my husband. He is fond of watching some pornography on his phone,” she added.
If convicted of insulting his stepdaughter’s modesty, the accused could be jailed up to one year, fined, or both.
The trial continues.
