A 47-year-old paedophile who took his lover's two children to a hotel in Geylang for "sleepovers" - making the girl, eight, and boy, nine, perform sexual acts on each other - was jailed for 24 years and given 24 strokes of the cane yesterday.

The High Court heard that the man told the siblings, who have low IQ, to re-enact scenes from pornographic videos and made them repeat the acts until he was satisfied with the recordings he was making on his phone.

He started preying on them in 2012 - less than two years following his release from prison after serving 12 months for sexually abusing his four-year-old daughter - and carried on until 2014, when the girl told her mother that she did not want to see him anymore.

Four years later, the man chanced upon the girl, then 14, and got her to have sex with him on multiple occasions.

The offences came to light last year after the boy was arrested for theft and having consensual sex with a minor, and disclosed to a psychologist that he had been sexually abused when he was younger.

Yesterday, the man pleaded guilty to three charges - two for sexual assault by penetration of a minor and one for abetment of sexual assault by penetration of a minor.

Another 13 charges, mostly for sexual offences, were taken into consideration.

The man, who was last employed as a kitchen worker, has not been named due to a gag order to protect the identities of the victims.

The court heard that the siblings' mother, a cleaner, was having an affair with the man, her supervisor at work, in 2012.

He had regular dinners with the family, including the siblings' father, and often took the children out for meals and arcade games by himself.

The siblings' mother allowed them to spend the night with him.

Records from the hotel showed that between May 2012 and July 2014, he had checked in 24 times.

During these "sleepovers", he made the children watch pornographic videos and instructed them to perform the sexual scenes, which he recorded for his subsequent viewing pleasure.

He also threatened the siblings with beatings, making them repeat the acts until they met his expectations. The abuse stopped after the girl told her mother that she did not want to meet him anymore, on the pretext that he had beat her and her brother up. She did not disclose the sexual abuse.

In 2018, the man and the girl reconnected. He made sexual advances towards her and she agreed to have sex with him in exchange for cigarettes and money.

He recorded the sexual acts on his phone and also told her to make audio recordings of her having sex with other people.

The man was arrested on Jan 30 last year after the psychologist who conducted the assessment on the boy alerted the police.

The girl was later assessed to be functioning within the very low range of intelligence.

She told a child psychologist that she felt "disgusted and bad" about what was done to her.

The boy was assessed to be intellectually disabled, with an IQ of 59. He reported feeling as if he had been "tortured" by the man.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Eunice Lau sought 26 years' jail and the maximum 24 strokes of the cane for the man, noting that he has been assessed as having a high risk of sexual reoffending.

"The accused is a paedophile who has repeatedly exploited young children as sex objects for his perverse gratification," she said.

The DPP added that the siblings' low intellectual abilities made them even more susceptible.

However, defence lawyer Sofia Bennita Mohamed Bakhash said the man did not know at that time that the children had low IQ.