SINGAPORE — A diagnosed paedophile who posed as a Housing and Development Board (HDB) officer and sexually assaulted two teenage sisters has been handed the maximum sentence of 20 years’ preventive detention.

In delivering the sentence on Monday (Dec 17), Justice Valerie Thean called 53-year-old cleaner Hussain Samat’s offences “shocking” and “of grave concern”, and said they “demonstrated a high level of premeditation”.

He had “concocted a scheme” and “repeatedly engaged in threats of physical violence in order to coerce (his) victims”, the High Court judge added.

She agreed with what the prosecution — led by Deputy Public Prosecutors David Khoo and Chew Xin Ying — asked for, and said that a “substantial term of preventive detention must be imposed…to protect the public”.

Hussain will not be caned because he is above 50.

Preventive detention, which ranges from seven to 20 years, is only imposed on recalcitrant offenders that the court believes should be locked away to protect the public from them.

THE CASE

Last month, Hussain pleaded guilty in the High Court to eight charges, including aggravated sexual assault by penetration, aggravated outrage of modesty, attempted aggravated rape, impersonation of a public servant, making an obscene film and exhibiting obscene films to a young person.

The court also heard that he was a repeat offender, having been jailed or fined for various offences since 1985.

These include armed robbery and possession of controlled drugs. In 2001, he was thrown behind bars for molesting and sodomising a 15-year-old boy and having sex with a teenage girl.

In the latest series of offences, which took place in May last year, Hussain devised a plan to pose as an HDB officer, knock on his neighbours’ doors and rob them of their valuables if they let him in.

He went to the unit where the sisters — who cannot be named to protect their identities — lived with their mother and told them he had received a complaint about them throwing trash near the central rubbish chute area.

The mother denied this accusation, and Hussain then decided to lure the elder daughter, then 16, to his flat.

He told the mother that one of her daughters must follow him to his flat to sign a document stating that they had not thrown any rubbish.

The older girl volunteered to go. Once she was in his flat, Hussain closed and locked the door, and shoved her onto a mat in the living room.

He threatened her with a penknife to have sex with him, forcibly removed her clothes and molested her.

She tried to escape before Hussain could sexually assault her, but he caught her and pinned her down.

He hurled vulgarities at the girl and shouted: “Do you want me to end you now?”

Dragging her back to the mat, he forced the girl to eat a pill — an antibiotic pill which he said was a birth control pill — before performing several sex acts on her. He filmed the acts, which lasted two-and-a-half hours.

Her ordeal did not end there, as Hussain drew up a plan to lure the younger girl, then 12, to his flat too.

He got his victim to call her sister using his mobile phone, and to tell the younger girl to take her elder sister’s phone to his flat.

He pointed a knife at the older girl’s abdomen and threatened to hurt her if she did not do as she was told.

When the younger girl showed up, he performed similar sex acts on her.

Before that, he showed her the obscene videos he had taken earlier of her elder sister, threatening to cut the older sister’s face if the younger girl did not perform the same sex acts.

The sisters only managed to escape when the older girl, now 18, sent a WhatsApp message to her secondary school friends, saying she had been kidnapped and asking them to call the police.

For aggravated sexual penetration of a minor, Hussain could have been jailed between eight and 20 years, with caning. His preventive detention sentence begins on Monday.