SINGAPORE - On multiple occasions over a period of two years, a man would wait until his wife and son were asleep or in another room before he would sexually abuse his niece in the next bedroom.

She was eight when he began abusing her.

The man, 42, cannot be named to protect the identity of the victim, and was sentenced to three years' jail and six strokes of the cane on Friday (Sept 25).

He faced two charges of outrage of modesty and one charge under the Children and Young Persons Act. Four other similar charges were taken into consideration during his sentencing.

The court heard that the girl's parents are divorced and she was in the care of her paternal grandmother at the time of the offences, which occurred between 2016 and 2018.

She would occasionally stay overnight in her uncle and aunt's homes and she regarded the man as a close uncle.

In one incident in 2018, the court heard that the man rubbed his genitals against her through his boxer shorts while his wife and son were sleeping in the master bedroom.

He then went to the bathroom to perform a sexual act.

Sometime in June or July that same year, the man asked the girl to lift her shirt and show him her breasts before he groped her.

In 2016, when the girl was eight, she spent the night at her uncle's flat which was then in Tampines. When she was alone in a bedroom, he used a cloth to blindfold her before performing sexual acts on her.

The girl, who is now 12, reported her uncle to the police in September 2018.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Jaime Pang noted that the man "abuse(d) his position of trust" and he was "entrusted so much that she stayed over at his household".

With respect to the similar charges taken into consideration, DPP Pang added: "This is not an isolated event (but rather ) a pattern of sexual abuse that lasted two years."

He added that the man's acts were somewhat premeditated as he chose to commit the offences when he was alone with her.

The man's lawyer, Mr Peter Fernando, pleaded with the court to allow his client to "turn over a new leaf" since his client is married and a caregiver to his five-year-old son.

Furthermore, Mr Fernando said a psychiatrist opined that the man suffers from major depression, and at the time of the offence, he had "unresolved grief and guilt" because of his father's suicide and was watching a lot of pornography to cope.

Responding to this, DPP Pang said that these factors did not seem mitigatory.

"These factors were already in place at the time of the offences... They did not deter (him) from offending and these offences occurred over a long period of time," he said.

In sentencing the man, District Judge Ng Peng Hong said the nature of the offences are "clearly very serious and necessitates deterrence."