Dad Sexually Abuses Daughter For More Than 7 Years

A 44-year-old Singaporean man was sentenced to 28 years in prison and 24 strokes of the cane for raping his young daughter and showing her pornographic images when her mother was out of the country or at work throughout seven and a half years.

According to Singapore newspaper Today, High Court judge Mavis Chionh told the court that the "greatest tragedy, in this case, is that (the girl) was robbed of her childhood innocence by her own father."

The European man, who is now a permanent resident of Singapore and works as a product manager, pleaded guilty to three counts of rape in the High Court last month. He began sexually assaulting his daughter when she was between three and seven and raped her when she was nine.

Due to a gag order imposed to protect the identities of his victims, the man's identity was not revealed. He and his wife are now divorced.

His sentencing took into account a total of 19 offenses, including four counts of rape and three counts of sexual harassment by penetration. According to the same report, officials took into account his possession of 296 pornographic videos on his mobile devices.

The man groomed his daughter by exposing her to pornography, according to the judge, in order to "normalize, in her young mind, the rapes and sexual assaults he was perpetrating against her."

The man will be 61 years old when he is released, according to Chionh, after backdating and the normal one-third remission for good conduct, according to Singapore-based outlet The Straits Times.

The abuse began in the family's rented condominium at the end of 2011, when the man began showering with the daughter and discovered he was a pedophile. Since the family moved to a new condominium, the suspected violence became more severe.

It lasted until the man was arrested in July 2019. The daughter said she never told anyone about the violence because she was afraid of her parents being divorced.

The assaults were discovered after the daughter's classmate, who lived in a nearby apartment, was sexually assaulted by the man and told authorities about it before her first Catholic communion in June 2019.