Wife granted personal protection order against husband who forced her into sex
The husband did not deny having sex with his wife but said it was consensual.
The Family Justice Courts - comprising the Family Courts, Youth Courts and Family Division of the High Court - as seen on Nov 1, 2024. (File photo: CNA/Raydza Rahman)
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SINGAPORE: A family court has granted a woman a personal protection order against her husband after he forced her into sex.
In a judgment made available on Saturday (Jan 17), Magistrate Soh Kian Peng found the woman's account to be more believable and supported by evidence, compared with the man's account of consensual sex.
Divorce proceedings are pending for the couple.
Marital immunity for rape was fully repealed in Singapore in January 2020.
According to the judgment, the woman applied for a personal protection order, a domestic exclusion order, a no-contact order, a stay away order and a mandatory treatment order against her husband.
Her complaint was based on sexual abuse as well as emotional or psychological abuse premised on a single incident on May 28, 2025.
According to the woman, her husband had returned home that day with their two daughters from a martial arts lesson.
The woman placed an order for wine and watched a show on her phone alone in her room.
She said she had not eaten properly or slept well in days and drank to help herself sleep, saying she was "emotionally overwhelmed and physically exhausted".
Her husband then went into her room and began scolding her for drinking.
The woman said during the trial that this was because the pair had agreed not to drink in front of their children and also because consuming alcohol was against their religious beliefs.
The woman said she was lying on her side facing away from her husband when he hugged her tightly from behind and refused to let go.
She said she asked him repeatedly to stop, refraining from screaming as she did not want to scare or traumatise her children.
Despite this, he sexually assaulted her before raping her. During this time, the woman said she continued begging him to stop and repeatedly said no.
She claimed that he responded: "(If) you're going to report, might as well I finish it."
She said her husband eventually stopped and left the room, leaving her "in shock, violated and emotionally destroyed".
After this, she texted a friend to let her know what had happened and fell asleep feeling drained, before reporting the assault the next morning.
The woman said she was deeply affected and became depressed, locking herself in her room for days and being unable to function.
The magistrate noted that documentary evidence produced by both sides was thin, but that there was a police report made on the morning of May 29, 2025.
THE HUSBAND'S SIDE
The man did not deny that he had sex with his wife on May 28. However, he asserted that it was consensual.
The man said he had sent the kids home and texted his wife to tell her there was a funeral downstairs to warn his superstitious wife not to be shocked by loud noises or prayers.
He said he assumed she was afraid when she asked where he was headed, and decided to return home.
When he got home, he found the wife drinking and said they began talking and kissing. According to him, this was how they began to have sex.
The man testified that he was upset when he found his wife drinking but said he did not scold her. Instead, he asked her why she was doing that in an "advising" or "managerial" tone.
He said his wife did not respond, just staring blankly into space with her glass of wine.
After this, they began talking about their past and current relationships when "it sparked", and they had sex.
The magistrate said the husband's account was internally inconsistent as it was puzzling how the man had gone from being upset with the wife for drinking to a discussion on their shared past and consensual sex.
"By his own account, the issue of consuming alcohol in the house was quite a serious matter. Apart from the fact that it was against their religious beliefs, the husband explained that it was necessary to demonstrate to both their children that drinking was not right and that it was prohibited," he said.
The magistrate said he could not see how the conversation on such a serious matter led to a discussion on their past sex lives and consensual intercourse, and found his account of events "quite difficult to believe".
"I found that the narrative the husband had presented was an attempt to cover up what had actually transpired – that he had forced himself on the wife in this incident," said the magistrate.
He accepted the wife's version of events and found that the husband's actions had amounted to family violence - an act of sexual abuse by forcing his wife to have sex with him.
It also amounted to emotional and/or psychological abuse, as the magistrate found it clear that the wife was tormented and distressed by his actions.
He ordered a personal protection order for the woman's safety and found that the husband had "showed that he had no respect for the wife's boundaries".
He also ordered a domestic exclusion order preventing the husband from entering the master bedroom, and ordered the couple to attend counselling.
The magistrate did not order the other orders sought, such as a mandatory treatment order, as he said there was no evidence hinting that the husband suffered from any underlying mental condition that was the cause of the family violence.
