Man admits to sexually abusing stepdaughter; he and victim’s mother pressured girl to drop case

SINGAPORE – A 33-year-old man admitted on April 14 that he had sexually abused his stepdaughter over more than three years when she was between nine and 12 years old.

Prosecutors told the High Court that after the matter was reported to the police, both the man and the girl’s mother tried to pressure the victim to retract her allegations.

The victim’s mother blamed her for reporting the abuse, and believed that the girl had lied in order to gain freedom.

On April 14, the man pleaded guilty in the High Court to one count of rape, one count of outrage of modesty, and one count of cheating in an unrelated offence.

Six other charges, mostly for sex offences against the victim, will be taken into consideration when he is sentenced at a later date.

The man and the girl’s mother married in 2017. The victim, who has two younger sisters, treated him as her father because he was the only male figure in her life.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Tin Shu Min told the court that the man sexually assaulted her for the first time between December 2017 and April 2018, when she was nine years old.

One night, while the girl’s mother was at work, he lay down beside her on the bottom bunk of a double-decker bed and molested her.

The younger sisters were sleeping on the upper deck at the time.

After this incident, he continued to molest her once or twice a month.

In early 2021, she recorded her feelings about the assaults on the Notes app on her phone. She ended the note saying: “You will be in jail already if I had told anyone about this.”

The man chanced upon the note the next day when he checked her phone.

After he threatened to kill her and her mother, she said she would not tell anyone about the abuse. He deleted the note.

The sexual assaults intensified – he began forcing her to perform oral sex on him.

In March or April 2021, she could no longer withstand the depravity of the assaults and confided in her friend. Her friend advised her to make a police report, but she refused out of fear that he would carry out his threat.

The last assault took place on the night of July 14, 2021.

When she returned to school two days later, the victim and her friend came up with a plan to lodge a police report.

On the afternoon of July 17, 2021, the victim went to her friend’s home for a birthday celebration. She told her friend’s mother about the sexual abuse, and the woman called the police.

The man was arrested that night.

Questioned by the police, he denied that he had sexually assaulted the victim and claimed that she was lying. A forensic test later found the man’s semen on the victim’s blanket.

On Sept 10, 2021, the victim was placed in a residential home under the direction of the Ministry of Social and Family Development.

On June 21, 2022, her mother forwarded a WhatsApp text message from the victim’s caseworker to the man.

The message stated that the girl would be interviewed by prosecutors later that month, on June 30.

The woman texted her husband, saying she would coax the girl to say that she had made a mistake.

She added: “Plus, whatever she said was not correct, right.”

Two days later, the woman and the man met the victim, and told her to say she had given a false statement because she was “mad” at her stepfather.

Feeling pressured by them, she decided to run away from the home.

The next evening, she agreed to meet her mother, thinking she would be alone.

But at the meeting, her mother told her to get into a van. Her stepfather, sisters and two uncles were in the vehicle.

As the van started moving, the man told her to tell the prosecutors that she wished to drop the case and to say that she had given a false statement to the police.

Her mother repeated what the man said, but the girl ignored them.

Before she alighted from the van, the man gave her a cup of bubble tea and $80 cash, and asked her to tell him if she had no money.

On April 14, 2025, the man asked for time to engage a lawyer to conduct his mitigation plea.

A family member who was his bailor told the court that the family had decided they would no longer post bail for him.

For rape, the most serious charge, he faces up to 20 years’ jail and is also liable to a fine or caning.