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SINGAPORE – A 20-year-old man was sentenced on Thursday (October 15) to 12 months in a Reformation Training Center (RTC) for sexually assaulting his cousin multiple times between 2016 and 2019.
He first sexually abused his cousin in an apartment when she was 10 and he was 15.
He continued to abuse her multiple times over the years, most recently in May of last year, when the man was 19 and the victim was 13.
The man cannot be named due to a gag order to protect the identity of the victim.
The court heard that on multiple occasions, he locked himself in a bedroom with the victim and instructed her to lie down on a mattress.
He then removed her shorts and underwear and proceeded to rub her exposed genitals against her lower body and buttocks.
The first time he assaulted his cousin, he was paired with her during a game of “hide and seek”, during which he isolated her from the others with whom they played. He then locked her in a bedroom and proceeded to abuse her.
The most pertinent thing is that in May of last year, the defendant took the victim, who was then 13 years old, out of the shower he was in. Despite the victim’s efforts to reject his advances, he forced her to lie down on a bed and proceeded to rub her exposed genitalia. against hers for about two minutes.
The deputy prosecutor, Kor Zhen Hong, said that the defendant and the victim’s family shared a “close relationship” and that the victim did not trust anyone because she was “afraid of spoiling the relationship between their families.”
DPP Kor added that the victim did not resist as he respected him and “did not want to upset him.”
This pattern of sexual abuse finally came to light in late May of last year, when the victim’s older brother noticed that the defendant and the victim frequently spent time together in a locked bedroom.
He relayed his concerns to his mother, who questioned the victim. The girl later revealed that she had been the victim of her cousin’s sexual advances since 2016.
Finally, a police report was filed on May 30, 2019 at the Hougang Neighborhood Police Center, where the victim told officers that she had been “sexually assaulted.”
DPP Kor asked that the man be sentenced on time to a RTC, rather than probation, as the crimes had been committed over an extended period of four years.
“The age difference between the accused and the victim was quite significant, and we recommend that a structured environment like the RTC would reduce their risk of recidivism,” DPP Kor said.
The man was sentenced on the basis of three indicted charges of outrage of modesty. The first took place between May and June 2016, the second between November and December 2018, and the third took place in May 2019.
Four other charges of modesty outrage were taken into account in the man’s sentencing.
District Judge May Mesenas told the man before his sentencing that she hoped the victim could “get over and deal with what you have done to him.”
“I hope that after his time at RTC he makes sure that this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” said Judge Mesenas.
Judge Mesenas also asked the Ministry of Social and Family Development to locate and contact the victim to follow up with the necessary counseling. The court heard that the victim now lives with her mother, who has since remarried, and that there has been no contact between her and her cousin since the police report was made.
“I would like to ask MSF to communicate with the victim so that the aftermath and the consequences of what happened do not remain with her and are manifested in other consequences for her in the future,” said Judge Mesenas.
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