For 16 years, a married man turned to his girlfriend for sex, but after they broke up, he targeted his adult daughter, who has mild intellectual disability.

One afternoon, when he was alone at home with his daughter, the man told her to play a game with him, before he sexually assaulted and raped her.

The sexual abuse continued for three years, and only came to light after the man's wife happened to see him lifting the victim's shirt at a staircase landing outside their flat.

On Thursday (Nov 17), the 58-year-old man was sentenced to 23 years' jail after he pleaded guilty in the High Court to two charges of rape and one charge of sexual assault by penetration.

Four other charges were taken into consideration in sentencing.

The man cannot be named owing to a gag order to protect the identity of his daughter – the oldest of his three children – who is now 34 years old.

In sentencing, Justice Pang Khang Chau agreed with prosecutors, who argued that the man lacked remorse as he sought to justify his offences by blaming his wife for withholding sexual intimacy.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Jordon Li told the court that following the birth of their third child, the frequency of sex between the accused and his wife decreased. By 2000, the couple had stopped having any sexual intimacy.

The man had a Malaysian girlfriend, with whom he had sex until their relationship ended in 2016.

On the afternoon of the first assault in 2017, he forced the victim to perform oral sex on him and raped her, despite her reluctance and objection. After the rape, he told the victim not to tell her mother about what had happened.

In 2019, as she was coming out of the bathroom, the man told the victim, "let's have fun", before he raped her.

On July 8, 2020, the man's wife felt concerned when she realised that the victim was still not home at 11.45pm, and decided to wait for her at the corridor.

As she was walking along the corridor to wait, she noticed that the victim was at the staircase landing with a man, who was lifting up her shirt.

The woman ran towards the staircase landing and discovered that the man was her husband.

On seeing his wife, the man immediately let go of the victim's shirt, apologised and asked for his wife's forgiveness.

About 45 minutes later, the wife told her younger daughter what she had seen at the staircase landing. The younger daughter then asked her sister about the incident.

The victim revealed she had run into their father along the corridor, and that he had held on to his mobile phone with one hand and lifted her shirt with the other.

The younger daughter then took their father's phone from his bedroom when he was asleep and found, among other things, a video of the victim undressing herself in the deleted folder of the phone.

On further probing, the victim revealed to her sister that her father had recorded the video after he entered the bathroom while she was inside, and then told her to remove her clothes.

After some discussion, the wife and the younger daughter decided to go to the police, and took the victim to lodge a report on July 10, 2020.

The man was arrested on the same day.

During investigations, the victim revealed that her father had raped her, but she did not tell anyone as she was afraid that no one would believe her and because she did not want to cause disharmony in the family.

A report from the Institute of Mental Health said the victim was not able to give informed consent to sex, and was not capable of rejecting the accused's sexual advances due to her limited understanding of the nature and complications of sexual intercourse, immature social judgment and poor communication skills.

On Thursday, defence counsel Riko Isaac said the family had forgiven the man and wished to be reunited with him eventually.

This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.