SINGAPORE: A mother who did not report her son’s sexual abuse and rape of his sister for years was sentenced to four years and six months’ jail for her actions.
Her son’s offences took place from 2010 to 2017, beginning when the girl was only five years old. The woman was aware of her son’s acts of sexual abuse but did not make a police report.
On Thursday (Feb 22), the 45-year-old woman was sentenced to jail after she pleaded guilty in January to three charges: One charge of omitting information about criminal offences and two other charges of knowingly permitting the ill-treatment of a child.
Another two charges of omitting information about criminal offences were taken into consideration for sentencing.
The names of the victim and the mother cannot be published due to a court order to protect the victim’s identity. The case of the son concluded in 2020, where he was sentenced to 11-and-a-half years’ jail and seven strokes of the cane for the statutory rape and molest of his sister.
WHAT HAPPENED The girl and her two brothers lived with their mother in a two-room public housing flat. The mother divorced the victim’s father sometime in 2013 and she had custody of the two boys, while her ex-husband had custody of the daughter.
In 2010, when the girl was five years old, her then 13-year-old brother carried her into the kitchen and made her sit on a washing machine.
The mother walked in on the scene and saw her son completely naked, while the girl was naked from the waist down, and asked her son what he was doing.
She dressed her daughter and told her son that the victim was his younger sister and he should not do such a thing to her.
On another occasion in 2010, the son removed the girl’s clothes and performed a sex act on her. His mother later saw semen stains on the girl’s underwear and asked if the boy had molested his sister again and had sexual intercourse with her, but he denied it.
She told him again that he should not do such a thing to his younger sister.
The woman did not regularly check in with the girl and her brother on whether his sexual abuse of her had ceased and did not report the above incidents to the police.
In June 2017, the mother told her then 20-year-old son to sleep in the same bed as his sister, who was 12 years old. The siblings also slept in the same bed regularly.
During this period, the son raped his sister. The mother woke during this incident and saw her son committing this offence, after which she asked him what he was doing and reminded him that she was his sister.
He raped her a total of three times that year.
On another occasion, the mother woke when the son engaged in an argument with the girl. The woman asked him if he was not afraid of the consequences and reminded him that the victim was his younger sister.
The mother became worried that her daughter might be pregnant after she missed her period in October and November 2017. She bought a pregnancy kit for her daughter which revealed the girl was pregnant.
She took her daughter to a clinic, which also confirmed the result and advised the mother to lodge a police report and take her to a hospital for a full examination. The mother did neither as she feared her son would be arrested.
She then took her daughter to a clinic in Johor Bahru for an abortion on Dec 11, 2017, but the clinic refused to do it as the foetus was over eight weeks old.
The mother subsequently told her daughter to not attend school to avoid detection of her pregnancy and informed the school that she was unwell, requesting for her daughter to be withdrawn from secondary school.
She eventually told the school that her daughter was pregnant and that her son was the father. The school informed the Ministry of Social and Family Development’s child protective services, which lodged a police report.
The girl’s pregnancy was later terminated in February 2018. Further investigations revealed that the biological father of the foetus was another young man.
“A PARENT’S FAILURE” The woman’s lawyer, Mr Cory Wong from Invictus Law, who represented her pro-bono, had highlighted in January that the mother had been diagnosed with major depressive disorder and agoraphobia, a type of anxiety disorder.
In sentencing, District Judge Kenneth Chin said that he gave “little weight” to her mental condition, which was diagnosed after the offences occurred and did not have a contributory link to her offences.
“The law imposes an obligation on those who have the custody or care of a child to protect them from ill-treatment, as their young age leaves children vulnerable and unable to defend themselves,” said the judge.
The woman’s offences were representative of “a parent’s failure” to protect her young child from sexual abuse and her failure to prevent the sexualisation of the victim at a young age would leave consequences for the girl for the rest of her life, said the judge.
He added that the mother had “failed to nip such criminal offending in the bud” before her son’s behaviour escalated to more serious offences, despite having reason to believe he was sexually abusing his sister from as early as 2010.
As the parent of both the perpetrator of the crime and the victim, the judge said that the woman had a “unique position of both authority and responsibility”.
He added that she had “failed completely” in her parental duties to educate her son on what was right and wrong and to protect her daughter from risk of further sexual abuse.
Addressing the woman directly, the judge said that he was “heartened” to hear from her mitigation plea delivered by her lawyer that the family has “come a long way”.
“But there is yet a further road ahead of you. It is the hope of this court that you will be able upon your release to move forward together with the victim,” he said.
The judge allowed the woman to speak with the multiple family members that watched the sentencing from the public galley.
For each charge of knowingly allowing the ill-treatment of a child, the woman could have been jailed for up to four years and fined up to S$4,000 (US$2,978).
For intentionally omitting to give information about an offence, the woman could have been jailed for up to six months and fined.
This article was originally published in TODAY.