SINGAPORE — A 52-year-old man began standing trial in the High Court on Tuesday (Sept 17) on nine charges of raping, molesting, criminally intimidating and causing hurt to his 23-year-old biological daughter.

He allegedly punched the woman in the head, strangled her and threatened her with a penknife to force her to submit to the alleged sexual offences.

He cannot be named to protect the identity of his daughter, who is now 27 years old.

Tuesday’s hearing was not open to the public or media.

Prosecutors said in their opening statement that the man allegedly committed the offences at the flat where his daughter lived with her mother, who is his former wife.

He had been living in the flat for about three weeks, though court documents did not give more details on the arrangement.

Five days before the alleged sexual assault, the man’s ex-wife left the flat to stay with her son at his home. Prosecutors did not say why.

This left the man and his daughter, who was unemployed at the time, alone in the flat.

In the wee hours of March 27 in 2016, the pair were drinking alcohol there and talking when she fell asleep. She was allegedly awakened when she felt someone touching her private parts over her shorts, and saw her father doing it while completely naked.

The man is then accused of holding a penknife at her neck and saying: “Don’t shout, I’ll slash you.”

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Ng Yiwen told the court: “As a result, the victim was put in fear of death and frightened into subordination by the accused. The victim was made to suffer indignities, humiliation and pain at the hands of the man that she loved and called ‘appa’, as the accused committed the acts in the charges, callously ignoring her pleas to let her go.” 

The man allegedly raped her twice, forced her to give him oral sex, and punched and strangled her into compliance when she tried to wrestle the penknife away from him, DPP Ng added.

Court documents showed that while holding the penknife to her neck, he allegedly told her, “Blow for me, you want to do now or I will cut your throat” and “Take out your clothings, otherwise I will use the knife to cut you till you die”.

Later that morning, she got him to return her mobile phone to her. She then left the flat alone on the pretext of buying a drink.

She used the phone to call someone — whose identity was redacted from court documents — and asked him to pick her up.

They went to the Jurong Police Division headquarters, met her brother, and made a police report. The father was arrested at about 8pm later that day.

Prosecutors said that they will lead evidence from analysts from the Health Sciences Authority, to show that the father’s DNA profile was found to match the semen on the daughter's shorts.

A psychiatrist from the Institute of Mental Health will also testify that the daughter was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, exhibiting depressive symptoms.

Evidence will be given on how the father called her 36 times on her mobile phone between the time when she left the flat until his arrest later that evening, prosecutors said.

“The evidence will show that the accused sent her eight SMS messages and one WhatsApp message during that time. And in one SMS message, the accused told the victim that he was sorry,” DPP Ng told the court.

The trial continues for the rest of the week before Justice Hoo Sheau Peng.

If convicted of aggravated rape, the man faces up to 20 years’ jail. While the offence also carries a mandatory minimum 12 strokes of the cane, he cannot be caned by law as he is above 50 years old.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story stated that the hearing on Tuesday was closed to the public and media as the victim took the stand in court. The Attorney-General's Chambers has clarified that she did not take the stand.