A 34-Year-Old Singaporean Who Raped His Own Mother Has Been Sentenced To 16 Years In Jail
The High Court judge also ordered 18 strokes of the cane.
By Sadho Ram — 15 Mar 2018, 03:10 PM
On 14 March, the High Court of Singapore sentenced a 34-year-old man to 16 years in jail for raping and molesting his biological mother
The man, who cannot be named due to a court-imposed gag order to protect the identity of the victim, had raped his own mother in the early hours of 4 October 2013.
According to a report in Channel NewsAsia, the son assaulted his mother, then 53 years old, after returning home to find her asleep and alone in the family’s one-bedroom flat.
While the mother pleaded for him to stop, he molested her and raped her.
During his trial, that spanned two years, the High Court on Wednesday convicted him of three charges of rape, molestation and aggravated molestation. The man, however, denied all three charges against him, reported Channel NewsAsia.
At trial, the man's legal team had argued that he had been framed by his mother and stepfather who had plotted to "get rid of him"
According to the man's legal team, led by Senior Counsel Harry Elias, the mother and her husband had "colluded … to make a false report that (the accused) had raped (his mother) in order to permanently get him out of (the flat) and their personal space.
Channel NewsAsia reported Senior Counsel Elias telling the court on Wednesday that it is undisputed that the accused was "a nuisance" to his mother and her husband and "a thorn in their lives and that they needed to put him away for good".
Deputy Public Prosecutor Sharmila Sripathy-Shanaz, however, shot back saying that the victim "learnt what it meant to be re-victimised"
According to the Prosecutor, while the mother and son didn't share a close relationship, she invited him to live with her and her second husband in their one-bedroom flat.
The son, who had past convictions for drug-related offences, burglary and robbery, had nowhere to live, was made to feel home and despite the inconveniences, the mother never once questioned her safety in her son's presence…(he was) her flesh and blood".
When the man's legal team argued that the mother could have "shut the gates by crossing her legs", the prosecutor shot back, saying, "after enduring a sexual assault at the hands of her son, (she) was assaulted at trial by scandalous questions designed to attack her, to (portray her as) a loose woman, a terrible mother and a liar," Channel NewsAsia reported yesterday, 14 March.
The man's defence, however, fell flat on its face after an audio recording of phone calls between him and his mother was played during the trial. The recording's content proved to be damning.
In the recording, which the mother had made during her call to him, the son was heard telling his mother that what happened was "between us" and he would "want (it) again".
According to The Straits Times, in the six-minute phone conversation between the two, the mother repeatedly asks him why he "kacau" (disturb) her.
"Why you force me in the morning just now?... There are pretty women you can get, why like this?... (I am) your mother you know. How Boy? In this world, can something like this happen?", the mother asked the son.
The phone recording, the prosecution argued, was clear proof that the man had forced himself on his mother, reported the Malay Mail Online.
Judicial Commissioner Foo Chee Hock, while finding that the prosecution had proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt against the accused, said that the case raised "two disturbing questions"
First, if a mother would falsely accuse her biological son of raping her?
And second, if a son would rape his mother?
"Our minds struggle to comprehend it," DPP Sharmila said
"For all the vastness of the English language, there is simply no word that comes even remotely close to capturing the horror that would have washed over the victim as she was cruelly and relentlessly sexually assaulted by the very son she gave life to 30 years earlier," the DPP added as reported by the Malay Mail Online.
Meanwhile, in summing up the case, she said, "There are no winners in this case — not least the victim who will forever carry the indescribable humiliation, betrayal and hurt so callously inflicted on her by her son… and again in court."
While the prosecutor had urged the court to impose a sentence of 18 years in jail and 19 strokes of the cane, the High Court judge ordered 18 strokes of the cane along with his 16 year sentence
