She was 'curvaceous like a woman': Man admits to sexually abusing 8-year-old stepdaughter
SINGAPORE — Aroused by his eight-year-old stepdaughter, the man would prey on her as they shared the same bed – even as her mother lay sleeping on his other side.
The 42-year-old man sexually abused his stepdaughter, whom he felt had become “curvaceous like a woman”, for a period of one and a half years.
At the High Court on Tuesday (2 July), the canteen helper pleaded guilty to one count of sexual penetration of a girl under the age of 14 and two counts of molesting the same girl. Both the accused and the victim, who is now 12, cannot be named to protect the latter’s identity.
Tuesday’s hearing came after the man’s initial plea of guilt was rejected twice over disputes regarding the case’s statement of facts.
Victim, accused shared same bed
According to court documents, the man married the victim’s mother in 2013.
The victim slept in a bedroom along with her stepfather, her mother and two step-siblings. On various occasions she would share the same bed as her mother and stepfather – especially when there were thunderstorms, which scared her.
In the first week of January 2015, the man began sexually abusing the victim, who was eight years old at the time. Aroused by the sight of her exposed underwear, he began touching her, thinking she was asleep.
He preyed on her more frequently when her mother fell pregnant in 2015 and the couple became intimate less frequently.
Even though the girl would be woken up by the man’s acts, she would feign sleep out of fear, resisting only occasionally by turning her body away or pushing away his hands.
Accused ‘overcome with lust’
The sexual abuse continued for one and a half years until the girl revealed the man’s acts to her biological father, whom she would visit on weekends.
On 15 October 2016, as the victim was being brought home by her father, she began crying more hysterically than usual and refused to enter her stepfather’s flat.
The victim’s father felt something was amiss and brought her aside. She revealed what had happened and her father lodged a police report three days later. The man was arrested on the same day at his workplace.
“Upon his arrest, the man told police that he started to notice that the victim was developing physically and saw that she had become ‘curvaceous like a woman’.
“Thereafter, he was overcome with lust for the victim and sexually assaulted her when she was asleep,” Deputy Public Prosecutor Kavitha Uthrapathy told the court.
The man also told police that he had fantasies of having sex with the girl but was afraid she would no longer be a virgin. He admitted that the girl tried resisting his advances. When asked by the victim if he had done anything wrong to her, the man would also deny having done so.
During an earlier hearing, the man had claimed that his stepdaughter had led him on and even placed his hands on her private parts.
The man, who is legally blind in both eyes after being diagnosed with glaucoma in 2005, will be sentenced on 12 July.
For molesting a person under the age of 14, he faces a jail term of up to five years along with a possible fine and caning. For sexual assault by penetrating a person under the age of 14, he faces a jail term of between eight and 20 years and with caning or not less than 12 strokes.
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