SINGAPORE: He was just 15 years old in 2020 when he raped his seven-year-old stepsister six times at places including her own home.
The offender, who is now 19, told the victim that he would hit her if she told anyone about what he had done.
The girl suffered in silence before she finally told her biological brother, identified in court documents as W1, on Aug 16, 2022, about her ordeal.
On July 22, the offender was ordered to undergo reformative training for at least six months after he pleaded guilty to one count of each of rape and molestation. Seven other charges were considered during sentencing.
Young offenders sent for reformative training are detained in a centre to observe a strict regimen that can include foot drills and counselling.
He cannot be named owing to a gag order to protect the victim’s identity.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Gladys Lim said that the victim’s widowed mother married the offender’s father in February 2019.
From June that year, the offender would stay with the victim and her family in a Woodlands flat from Friday to Sunday, and on school holidays. Eleven people lived in the unit including the victim and her grandfather.
The offender stayed with his biological mother in an Ang Mo Kio flat on school days.
Some time in December 2020, he was watching television on a bed in a room at the Woodlands flat when the victim came forward and rested beside him.
Feeling aroused, he then asked her to perform a sexual act on him, and she complied.
The DPP said: “This was the first time that the accused had performed such a sexual act on the victim. The victim kept quiet while the accused was doing so, as she did not know what to do.
“The accused then told the victim that he would hit her if she did not keep what happened between them as a secret.”
The offender went on to sexually abuse her multiple times for over a month after this incident in the flat and at a nearby lift landing.
The prosecutor said that to do so, he would find opportunities to be alone with the victim, by acts including staying back with her when the other family members left the Woodlands flat to run errands.
When the offender’s father died in mid-2021, the victim’s mother told him and her other stepchildren to move out of the Woodlands flat so that their own mother could take care of them.
The victim was in the living room of the Woodlands flat at around 10pm on Aug 16, 2022, when she refused to go to bed despite being told to do so by her mother and W1.
The girl later told W1 that the offender had sexually abused her. W1 then alerted their mother, the court heard.
The DPP said: “(The victim) broke down into tears as she told them what the accused had done to her. She shared that she was happy that the accused had since moved out of the Woodlands flat so that she did not need to be afraid of facing him.”
Her mother alerted the police on Aug 17, 2022. - The Straits Times/ANN
