When dads become demons
They are fathers only in name. Two men - a biological father and a stepfather - were sentenced to jail and caning yesterday. Both had molested their daughters. The stories below recount the girls' suffering and humiliation.
He drank and she feared his temper.
The girl was watching television at night when she received a WhatsApp message from her father.
The security guard had summoned his daughter, then a Primary 6 student preparing for PSLE, to his bedroom.
When the unsuspecting 12-year-old then entered the dark room, he hugged her from behind.
Holding her with a strong grip, he then slipped his right hand under her shirt and touched her breast in the September 2014 incident.
He continued fondling her for about two minutes before releasing the girl, who cannot be named to protect her identity.
In shock, she immediately ran to the master bedroom, where her grandmother and her two siblings were sleeping. The children's mother did not live with them.
Yesterday, the court heard that the girl, now 14, was molested again in November 2014.
This time, she noticed alcohol on her father's breath.
She did not raise an alarm during the incidents as she was afraid of her father, especially when he was drinking.
The man, 43, was sentenced yesterday to four years and three months' jail, and five strokes of the cane for two counts each of outrage of modesty and criminal intimidation.
Court documents showed that the man would send his daughter WhatsApp messages every time he wanted to "sayang" her.
Police investigations revealed the girl rejected all his requests after the second incident.
On the afternoon of June 29 last year, before he went to work, the girl's father pleaded with her to allow him to "sayang" her.
When she declined, he asked her to delete all the incriminating messages sent from his mobile phone to hers. Fortunately, the girl disobeyed him.
REVEAL
Instead, while accompanying her maternal grandmother to a clinic that day, she broke down in tears, showed the woman the messages from her father sent and told her what had happened.
Her grandmother later told the girl's mother, who confronted him.
A quarrel broke out at the couple's Tampines flat. The woman slapped her husband, spat on his face and hit him once with a broom.
While the pair was separated during the quarrel by the grandmother, the situation escalated.
The man took a prayer knife with a 10cm blade and chased his estranged wife.
Later that evening, the girl's mother called the police. Court papers revealed a similar act of criminal intimidation in September 2014.
He had returned home at about 3am smelling of alcohol and was shouting.
When his wife told him to keep his voice down, he said: "If there was someone else who can take care of the children, I will not hesitate and I will kill you."
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