Man, 70, convicted of molesting daughter more than 20 years ago

SINGAPORE: A 70-year-old man was convicted on Friday (Jul 25) of molesting his daughter on two occasions when she was aged between five and seven.

The victim, who is now 30, left home when she was 21 after she "snapped" during a family trip to Desaru and felt she could no longer live under his roof.

The man, who attended the hearing surrounded by supporters, contested the charges.

His lawyers, led by Mr Chung Ting Fai, said there were "significant doubts" about the incidents and the frequency of the sexual abuse. They also suggested that the victim had "false memory syndrome", a condition where a person strongly believes in a traumatic memory that is false. 

Other than the victim and her father, no one else had witnessed the acts. Although the charges were only for two incidents between 1999 and 2001, the victim testified at trial that it occurred often and estimated it to have happened 50 to 100 times.

District Judge Carol Ling found that the victim was a credible witness who gave sufficiently detailed evidence for the two incidents.

Her account was also not shaken under cross-examination, said the judge.

THE PROSECUTION'S CASE

According to the prosecution's submissions, the incidents occurred at the family home where the victim lived with her parents and her brother.

Sometime in end-2011, the victim told her first boyfriend that she had been molested when she was young. She later told him that her father was the perpetrator.

Sometime around February 2015, the victim broke up with another boyfriend. She told him that she had "flashbacks of her father touching her at inappropriate areas when she was young ... in the groin area".

On Feb 21, 2015, the victim and her relatives went on a trip to Desaru, Malaysia.

During the trip, the accused got into a minor traffic accident which caused him to get into an argument with his wife. He also got upset at his wife for not making sufficient payment at a restaurant, and shouted at the victim for running around while her brother was in the washroom.

Finding her father frustrating and difficult to be around, the victim "snapped" and resolved to move out of the family home so she need not continue to live under the same roof as her father, as if she was "someone who was never abused by him", the prosecutors said.

She moved out in August 2015, left Singapore to study at a university in the United Kingdom and returned to Singapore after completing her degree in 2019.

At trial, the victim recalled that the first incident occurred when she was sick and her father had taken her to see a doctor.

After returning home, she lay down on the living room couch to have a nap. She said she woke up and felt her father molesting her.

When she looked at him, he paused for a second and made eye contact with her, seeming "almost taken aback" as if he had not expected her to open her eyes.

For the second incident, she was sitting with her father in the living room facing the television.

Her father was molesting her when her mother came out of her room and walked past them to go to the kitchen.

The victim testified that her mother made a comment along the lines of telling her father to stop what he was doing.

She said that her father continued to molest her after checking that his wife was no longer looking.

Explaining why she did her best to play it off and pretend like nothing was wrong, the victim said she did not want to acknowledge that her own father was molesting her.

She found this to be "too ... insane and overwhelming". She also thought that if she recognised the abuse for what it was, "that would make it real".

She also felt "very scared and very powerless" and continued to have an amicable relationship with her father for about 10 years after the sexual abuse.

She said things changed in the years leading up to when she turned 21 in 2015, as it got "harder and harder" to avoid the fact that her father had molested her, due to the trauma that manifested in the struggles she had in her romantic relationships.

DEFENCE CASE

The defence had urged the judge to acquit the accused.

They said the victim had told her mother about the abuse, as she was having frequent arguments with her boyfriend about how doing sex work was the only way to raise money and move out.

"The victim then told her mother about the alleged sexual abuse as she needed financial support from her mother to move out," said Mr Chung. 

"At this juncture, we wish to respectfully highlight that it is unfathomable why a 21-year-old girl would feel that the only way she could raise money to move out would be to get employed in the sex industry."

He added that the victim "seemed to attribute many unfortunate events in her life to the alleged sexual abuse".

The defence said the victim has a history of being hospitalised because of breakdowns from stress in her studies or romantic relationships and took antidepressants and saw psychologists.

The lawyers said the victim was seeing a psychiatrist, whom she told about the alleged sexual abuse. The defence claimed that this psychiatrist had told the victim's parents that the victim had false memory syndrome, when the victim was hospitalised after a breakdown.

However, the psychiatrist denied this at trial, saying it was not possible for him to have diagnosed this as it would require an independent psychiatrist and someone to confirm if the incident had taken place or not.

The victim's mother testified that her daughter had a better relationship with her father than herself. She said her husband was a loving father, and that there was "nothing remarkable" about her daughter up until primary school, except for the fact that she was very quiet.

She testified that she had never seen her husband touching her daughter inappropriately, including the incident in the living room as recalled by her daughter.

However, she recalled the incident when her daughter was sick, remembering that her husband had taken her daughter to see a doctor for a urinary tract infection.

The offender testified that he may have been applying medication to his daughter's private parts to treat the infection.

He will return to court for mitigation and sentencing in September.

For each charge of molestation, he could be jailed for up to two years, fined, or both. He cannot be caned as he is above 50.