Jail for man who abused 11-year-old girl with special needs
A man who slapped and hit his girlfriend’s 11-year-old daughter with a leather belt while the child’s mother stood by and watched was sentenced on Sept 17.
The man was sentenced to a year’s jail while the victim’s mother was handed a 10-month sentence.
The couple, both 36, cannot be named to protect the victim’s identity.
In August, the man admitted to one charge of ill-treating the victim, who has special needs, under the Children and Young Persons Act, while the woman pleaded guilty to knowingly permitting the abuse.
In sentencing the couple on Sept 17, District Judge Shaiffudin Saruwan said the girl, who initially shared a close relationship with the man and even called him “Daddy”, suffered extensive injuries and had nightmares about the abuse.
The judge said she was especially vulnerable due to her special needs.
She has high-functioning autism, mild fluency disorder, dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
In sentencing, Judge Shaiffudin also said he accorded the appropriate mitigating weight to the man’s psychiatric condition, noting that his capacity to exercise restraint and self-control was reduced on account of his major depressive disorder.
The court previously heard that in February 2020, the man moved in with the woman and the victim in their Housing Board flat.
Shortly after he moved in, the couple started to cane the victim with a hanger or a cane when they felt she had misbehaved, such as not completing her school assignment, complaining about having to do household chores, not waking up for school or turning off the alarm when it rang.
During the previous court hearing in August, Deputy Public Prosecutor Niranjan Ranjakunalan cited seven incidents in which the man or the couple caned the victim between June and August 2020.
On Aug 11, 2020, the girl’s teacher noticed cane marks on her body and scheduled a meeting with her mother. The meeting was to take place on Aug 26, because the woman was not available on an earlier date.
The abusive acts escalated on Aug 22, four days before the scheduled meeting.
That day, the man struck the victim on her arms and legs as she had lost her pocket money and performed poorly in school, among other reasons.
When the girl told the man that the cane “would not work”, he lost his temper and decided to hit the victim with a leather belt instead.
In the presence of the girl’s mother, the man slapped the child’s face and hit her arms and legs with the leather belt about 20 times.
As a result, she had multiple bruises all over her body.
When the girl attended school two days later, she told her teacher about what the man had done, and said she was very scared to return to the flat.
The school called the Ministry of Social and Family Development, and a child protection officer took the girl to the hospital, where she was hospitalised for 10 days.
The hospital referred the case to the police, and the couple were arrested the next day.
For ill-treating a child, or knowingly permitting a child to be ill-treated, an offender can be jailed for up to eight years, fined up to $8,000, or both.
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