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May 18, 2008
Stepdad accused of rape: Girl made first move
He claimed that 11-year-old initiated sexual relationship and even professed her love for him
By Khushwant Singh
Two contradictory tales of sex and rape were heard in the High Court last week when a man went on trial for sexually assaulting his young stepdaughter - even though the two key witnesses are no longer in town.

The accused has claimed that his stepdaughter, who was then 11 years old, was the one who initiated the sexual trysts between them - an allegation that runs counter to what the prosecution says.

The 37-year-old IT operations specialist from India faces 16 counts of statutory rape and 26 counts of making the girl perform oral sex on him.

He is claiming that he is innocent and that he had admitted to the allegations only because he was intimidated by police officers.

The case has drawn legal interest because the girl and her mother have since returned to India. Both key witnesses are thus unavailable to testify.

Representing himself, the man - who cannot be named in order to protect the girl's identity - claimed that a few months after the girl had arrived from India in 2004, she initiated the sexual relationship by massaging his private parts. She performed oral sex from January 2005, and they had sex when she hit puberty later that year, he claimed.

However, his allegations contradicted what Deputy Public Prosecutor Amarjit Singh had told the court. The DPP said the accused first acted intimately with the girl in 2004, when he allegedly asked her to massage his calves before telling her to move her hand up to his groin.

In January 2005, he called the girl into his bedroom and told her to perform oral sex on him, said the DPP. In November that year, he raped the girl for the first time, the DPP added.

When the trial opened last week, police officer Aileen Yap and psychiatrist Wei Ker-Chiah told the High Court the accused said that the girl had professed her love for him.

The man told Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Yap that his stepdaughter did not treat him as her father and called him by his nickname. She would call him 'Daddy' only when other people were around. She also wanted him to get a divorce and marry her, ASP Yap said.

The Indian national is now a Singapore permanent resident. He has one other stepchild and two younger children with the girl's mother.

He had told police he had sex with the girl once or twice a month in his three-room flat on his days off.

According to the man, she would go into the master bedroom, hug and kiss him and they would have sex. He worked on shifts and on those days, his wife would be out of the home, managing her beauty salon business.

Dr Wei, from the Institute of Mental Health, said the man told him he did not know having consensual sex with a girl below 14 was considered rape here. Under the law, a girl aged below 14 cannot consent to sexual activity. Dr Wei said the accused had no sexual disorders such as paedophilia or exhibitionism.

The man is now accusing ASP Yap of not recording accurately what he told her. She is standing by the police statement.

In it, the man further described his stepdaughter as jealous when he was seen with other women. He had to beat her because she had attacked him when she suspected him of courting another woman.

It was his affair with a woman colleague that led to the girl going to her mother. The pair then went to the police and he was arrested in May last year.

khush@sph.com.sg

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