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SINGAPORE – A man told his 11-year-old daughter to use sleeping pills after having a dispute with his estranged wife in April 2018.
A district court heard that he wanted to show the woman that her marriage disputes had caused the girl to feel stressed. He also wanted his wife to feel that she was at fault for not properly caring for their son.
The girl obeyed and ended up losing consciousness. She was held at the KK Children’s and Women’s Hospital (KKH) for more than a month.
The man then told the girl to lie to the police and tell an investigating officer that she had voluntarily taken the pills because she wanted to commit suicide.
Again, the girl obeyed. But four months later, he told the truth to a social worker.
The 40-year-old Singaporean man, who cannot be identified due to a gag order to protect his daughter’s identity, pleaded guilty in court on Wednesday (November 11) to one count of child abuse and intentional perverting. the course of justice.
He also admitted to an unrelated harassment charge.
Assistant District Attorney Joshua Phang said the man lived with his daughter in an apartment in Toa Payoh. His wife lived in another flat in Woodlands.
On April 7, 2018, the girl texted her mother because she was feeling unwell and asked the woman to pick her up from Toa Payoh so they could visit a doctor together.
The woman responded and told the girl to take a taxi to Woodlands because she did not want to meet the man.
The girl decided to stay home with her younger brother and her paternal grandmother. The man called his wife that night and they got into a fight.
The girl was in the living room around midnight when her father told her to retrieve a bottle of her grandmother’s sleeping pills. The court heard that they contained amitriptyline, a poison.
Then he told her to take some of the medications. Feeling overwhelmed, the girl swallowed about six pills. Later, her father told her to take more pills and again she obeyed.
When the girl lost consciousness, the man took her in a taxi to his wife’s apartment and called an ambulance on their way there.
He left the girl outside his wife’s house and knocked on the door around 3.45 a.m. on April 8, 2018.
When his wife opened the door, he told the woman that she would be “responsible if something happened to the victim.”
An ambulance arrived shortly after and took the girl to KKH.
Later, the man visited his daughter in hospital and told her to lie to the police about the situation.
According to instructions, the girl lied to Sergeant Dickson Lek on April 18, 2018, claiming that she had wanted to take her own life.
The DPP said: “In her statement, the victim told Sergeant Lek that she had taken the pills voluntarily because she felt that no one in her family was taking care of her and that she intended to commit suicide.
“He further said that he apologized for his actions and for upsetting so many people.”
On June 16, 2018, the police told her by mail that no further action would be taken against her. The man’s crimes finally came to light in August 2018 when his daughter revealed the truth to a social worker.
In an unrelated incident, the man was at Changi Beach Park on January 2 of last year when a police officer asked him for his NRIC. The man then verbally abused the officer and his colleague with vulgar language. He was later charged with harassment.
The man is represented by attorney Christopher Bridges and his bond was set at $ 15,000 on Wednesday. He will be sentenced on December 9.
For willfully perverting the course of justice, a criminal can be imprisoned for up to seven years and fined.
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