A 22-year-old Singaporean man was sentenced to 10 years in jail and 24 strokes of the cane on Tuesday for repeatedly sexually assaulting his young female cousin during their childhood. Starting at age 10, the man committed the assaults whenever his cousin was left in their aunt’s care, telling the then-6-year-old girl that the acts were “good for her” as a way to conceal the abuse over an extended period.
Case details show that the cousin was sexually assaulted weekly by her 10-year-old cousin from age 6, while staying at their aunt’s home. Because her parents worked, they would leave her, her two younger brothers, and a foreign domestic worker in the aunt’s care until dinnertime each day.
Although the victim testified that the abuse started in 2013, the prosecution focused charges on incidents occurring between 2016 and 2018. At that time, the boy was about 12 to 14 years old, and the girl was 8 to 10; all assaults occurred in the master bedroom on the third floor of a four-storey residence.
The victim stated that her cousin would snatch her onto the bed while she was doing homework in the room, lock the door, draw the curtains, and then proceed to assault her under the blanket. The cousin repeatedly told her the acts were “good for her” and ordered her not to tell anyone.
The victim once confided to the domestic worker between 2016 and 2017 that her cousin had touched her. Her father then requested to view footage from the closed-circuit TV, but the aunt claimed the system was broken. The victim was subsequently forbidden from entering the third floor, but later returned to the master bedroom because she found mosquitoes too plentiful on the first floor, at which point the abuse intensified. Afterwards, the cousin's parents accused her of lying, and both families eventually agreed that she would no longer visit the aunt’s home.
The victim later revealed that it was not until junior high, upon reading news reports and searching online for information about rape, that she realized her cousin’s acts were wrong. In September 2020, her mother discovered her search history, leading the victim to confess the full story. She initially hesitated to report the crime out of fear of damaging family ties, but after her father assured her in January 2021 that she need not worry about relations with relatives, she filed a police report.
The High Court judge, while sentencing, said the punishment needed to have a deterrent effect given the victim's age and the harm she suffered. Although the judge took into account that the perpetrator was young when the crimes were committed and reduced the sentence accordingly, he ultimately imposed 10 years' imprisonment and the maximum 24 strokes of the cane.