SINGAPORE — While seeking help for marital issues last year, a woman revealed that her husband had molested their biological daughter.

This was reported to the authorities, and on Monday (Dec 16), the father — a 44-year-old administrative assistant — was sentenced in a district court to one year and nine months behind bars, as well as three strokes of the cane. He pleaded guilty to one charge of molesting a minor.

He cannot be named to protect the identity of the girl, who was nine years old when he committed the offence around May last year.

The court heard that he had picked her up from her nanny’s home that evening before going to drink with his friends. His wife was overseas at the time.

After returning to their flat, he went to the girl’s room to retrieve some clothes from a shared wardrobe.

It was then that he noticed her asleep on the bed. He lay beside her and hugged her from behind.

“Feeling sexually aroused, the accused proceeded to line his underwear with tissue paper,” Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Chong Yong told the court.

He hugged the girl from behind again and continuously rubbed his private parts against her, before going to the toilet to wash up and take a shower.

Following this, he performed similar acts on her on at least two other occasions between May and September last year, also when his wife was abroad.

DID NOT WANT PARENTS TO QUARREL

The girl first told her mother about what happened in August last year, while the two were walking home together.

She recounted that some boys in school had joked about male and female private parts coming into contact, and told the older woman that this was “something like Daddy did to me”.

The girl also said that on each occasion, she was awoken by her father’s actions but kept quiet as she felt scared. She said that she did not want to report these incidents to her mother as she was afraid it would cause her parents to quarrel.

The next month, the mother went to the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware) for help with her marriage. There, she revealed that her daughter had been molested.

Aware notified the Ministry of Social and Family Development, which in return filed a police report.

‘MY HUSBAND IS A GOOD MAN’

DPP Chong argued that the man had committed a “highly intrusive sexual act”, abused his position of trust and planned his offences.

Seeking at least 23 months’ jail and three strokes of the cane, he added: “The accused struck only after the victim had already gone to sleep, and at times when there were no other adults at home whom the victim could turn to for help. The victim was especially vulnerable, and the accused exploited his high degree of access to her.”

In mitigation, the man’s lawyer TM Sinnadurai told the court that his client has visited the National Addictions Management Services for his drinking problems.

When District Judge Samuel Chua asked the man if he thought he had issues with alcohol, he replied “not really”, before conceding that he was unable to control himself when drunk.

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Mr Sinnadurai read out a handwritten letter from the man’s wife, who pleaded for a lighter sentence and said that it was not “his true character”.

She wrote: “Even my daughter still misses him even though she has been separated from him… We are working very hard to make our marriage work and be responsible parents for our daughter. 

“All I can say is that my husband is a good man and I believe he will remain a good person till the end.”

For molestation of a minor under 14, the man could have been jailed up to five years, fined or caned, or any combination of the three.