COURT: On 25 September last year, a 12-year-old form 1 student was returning home from school at about 5 pm. At the 7th floor, she left the lift in the building where she lived. From behind her, you covered her mouth and took her to the rear staircase to that floor. She asked you if you needed money and you said you did. She handed you $100. Sadly for that young girl, matters did not end there.
Having taken her money, you pulled down her underpants and fondled her private parts for about a minute. That caused her pain. She was menstruating. At that stage, you forced her to perform fellatio. When she resisted, you covered her nose and mouth and threatened to kill her, to suffocate her if she continued resisting you. A resident of the building walked past the staircase and you forced her to go down to the 5th floor. Because she was afraid that you would carry out your threat to kill her, she did not try to escape or cry for help.
There were sounds of a door opening when you were at the 5th floor. You took the child back to the 7th floor where you continued to interfere with her sexually. Still her ordeal was not over. You moved her once more to the 9th floor. Again you forced her to perform fellatio on you. It seems that it was on this floor that you had sexual intercourse with her. Another resident walked past the staircase and you held the girl so that she dare not shout for help. You moved to another floor where you continued to interfere with her private parts.
Throughout these assaults, you threatened her that you would not allow her to leave if she did not let you have your way with her. During the course of these assaults, or this ongoing assault, depending on how it is viewed, you also had sexual intercourse with her. It is plain that you did so without wearing a condom. I say this for it is an admitted fact that semen and human DNA which could originate from you were found on swabs taken from her vagina. You also told the police that you had intercourse with her without a condom, although whether any store can be placed on anything you might say is a matter for conjecture.
Eventually, you took her to the staircase at the 2nd floor where you ordered her to remove all her clothing. After she complied, you took her mobile telephone, which you later sold for $50, and some coins. You then left her, presumably naked, on that staircase and made off.
These events, which commonsense dictates must have been both horrifying and humiliating for this 12-year-old, lasted for an hour or more. You debased her and used her as nothing other than an object for your own perverted sexual gratification. It seems that this girl was a totally random victim. You were certainly unknown to her. There is nothing before me that explains what you were doing on the 7th floor of the building where she lived at that particular time, save that several of your previous attacks on young girls have occurred as they have left lifts in their own buildings.
While your choice of this girl may have been random, this was no isolated incident by you. You were 18 years old at the time of this incident and, even now, are only a matter of days over 19. Despite this, you have convictions for no fewer than nine previous offences, of which five were of a sexual nature, being indecent assault or attempted indecent assault.
You began your criminal career at the age of 13, in May 2007, when you managed to lure a 7-year-old girl away from her family so that you could muzzle her with your hand, lift her school skirt, stick your hand into her underpants and fiddle with her buttocks and private parts.
In November of that same year, you managed to persuade another 7-year-old girl to go with you around various children’s playgrounds. When you reached one where there were no other people, she wanted to leave precisely because there were no other people around, but you took out a paper-cutter and threatened to kill her if she cried for help. You took off her lower clothing, licked her private parts, rubbed against them with your penis and then masturbated in front of her until you ejaculated.
You escalated the age of your next victim whom you attacked a day or two after the second 7-year-old and, this time, went for a 17-year-old schoolgirl. You grabbed her as she left a lift inside the building where she lived. You dragged her to the rear staircase, pressed her to the floor, rubbed her breasts with your arm, fondled her genitals and told her that you intended to rape her. Fortunately, you were disturbed before you could carry out that threat.
In two further incidents a few minutes apart, in November 2009, when you were 15 years old, you attempted to indecently assault girls, both of whom were about 18. They both fought you off. A common feature of each of these two incidents, which occurs again in the rape and robbery offences for which I am to sentence you, is that they occurred after the girls had left the lifts in their own home buildings.
You have, of course, been sentenced for those sexual offences as well as for offences of robbery, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and going equipped for stealing. I have detailed the sexual offences based upon the Summaries of Facts which you admitted in respect of the offences which have been obtained for me from the magistracy because it is important for it to be appreciated that you prey on young girls who are alone and frequently within close proximity to their homes.
The fact that you are a repeat offender of a particular type of offence is a feature which is part of the background matrix against which I am sentencing you and which is recognised as a factor justifying an enhanced starting point for sentence. It also demonstrates the necessity for a substantial period of imprisonment to protect women from your predatory behaviour.
Even before committing your first offences, you had been diagnosed by the Children’s Psychiatric Services as having what is labelled as oppositional defiant disorder. That was in 2006. You have also been made the subject of a child protection order and been admitted to a juvenile home.
In respect of your first group of offences committed in 2007, in January 2008, you were sent to reform school. It is quite clear that that had little effect on you for you committed the two offences of indecent assault within six months of your discharge. That resulted in you being committed, in December 2009, to Training Centre. That also obviously had no effect on you.
I have not been told exactly when it was you were released from Training Centre but, by July 2012, you were once more stealing, this time from staff in a restaurant. You were granted bail in respect of a charge of theft. You committed the present offences of rape and robbery whilst out on that bail. That too is a factor which is recognised as justifying an enhanced starting point for sentence.
In order that she was not obliged to recount her experiences at your lustful and thieving hands once more, I did not call for a victim impact statement. I do not need such a statement to tell me that this child will have been affected, and possibly long-term, by your abhorrent behaviour. Once again, commonsense makes that blindingly obvious. If authority is needed for the proposition, it is to be found in Ngai Yiu Ching.
Conversely, I did call for reports to be prepared on you by a psychiatrist and a psychologist. It is probably understating the position to say that your pattern of behaviour in the last five years, since the age of 13, in regard to sexual offending is mercifully rare, indeed, in my experience, unique.
The psychiatrist noted that after being diagnosed in 2006 as having oppositional defiant disorder, you did not attend for further psychiatric follow-up. In 2009, in respect of the attempted indecent assault offences, a psychiatric assessment noted that you have special interest in those pornography of violent contents, eg, scenes depicting schoolgirls being followed in which these would be assaulted or raped.
The report continues, based on the observations during your present period of remand as well as your past psychiatric records and interviews with your mother and sister:
“Mental state examination found that he was calm, aloof, carefree and he didn’t show any signs of distress. His mood was normal. He spoke coherently and relevantly. He was not psychotic and had good contact with the environment. His attitude towards the offence was quite matter-of-fact. He admits to have raped the victim but he only has superficial remorse towards his act. He knows clearly what he is charged with. He understands his position in the legal proceedings.
In my opinion, Li is a sex re-offender who is indulged into violent sexual fantasies and has severe problems in his personality. He does not suffer from any treatable psychiatric disorder otherwise. Given his young age of first offending, lack of remorse and antisocial attitude, the prognosis is guarded and the risk of re-offending is high. Psychiatric treatment is unlikely to be helpful and he needs to be closely supervised while he is released back to the community in future.”
Given his comment that you need to be closely supervised when you are released back into the community, the lack of any such supervision facilities or the existence of some form of sex offenders register or monitoring causes me real concern, particularly given the view that the risk of you re-offending is high.
As to your past history, the clinical psychologist largely confirms the information made available by the psychiatrist. She, however, notes that you attribute your commission of these two offences, the rape and robbery, to your unfulfilled financial and sexual needs as you had insufficient funds and insufficient funds to continue to use the services of prostitutes as you had done previously. She describes you as having little victim empathy and your expressed remorse as being superficial. That, of course, is the view shared by the psychiatrist.
The psychologist continues that when you were assessed in December 2009, you showed significant discrepancy between your verbal and non-verbal abilities. Your verbal ability is relatively more developed and falls in the borderline range of normal intelligence whilst your non-verbal ability is in mild-grade range of mental retardation.
She notes that with your borderline range of verbal intelligence, you have adequate ability to understand the causes and the consequences of behavioural acts but your ability in abstract thinking and problem-solving skills will be expected to be significantly less than that of your peers. She takes the view that you have committed your past offences to have what she describes as “immediate gratification of his sexual needs as well as a sense of achievement”. She goes on:
“The offences are likely to be related with his impulsivity, maladaptive way of coping with his sex needs as well as his minimisation of negative consequences of his act. He seems to harbour some deviant sexual interest in girls with school uniform. His paedophilic interest is yet to be ascertained as he is still a young age. His risk of re-offending in sex offences falls in the high range. His risk of re-offending into thievish behaviour is also high. His self-control in the face of high-risk situations is assessed to be poor. His insight into his offending behaviours appears to be limited and superficial. His insight into his offending behaviours appears to be superficial and his motivation to change also seems to be fluctuating once he is at high-risk situation. In view of his past treatment progress, his prognosis is also assessed to be guarded.”
I have previously identified two aggravating features which are to be taken into account in determining the appropriate starting point after trial. These were, first, the fact that you are a serial sexual offender from whom it is necessary to protect women generally and young girls whom you target by a substantial period of imprisonment - if authority is needed for that, it is to be found in Cheung Kwok Yip Peter and also in Chung Chu Yu(?) - and the two offences were committed whilst you were on bail.
There are three further features which aggravate sentence: third, the tender age of your chosen victim - Kong Yun Chiu and Chung Chu Yu are both authorities for that proposition - fourth, that you had sexual intercourse with her without using a condom - Mahal Harpreet Singh applies - fifth, the course which the rape took in the sense of the duration of the sexual assault upon her, the threats to her life, that you moved around the building in order to continue assaulting her, and the fact that you degraded her further when you twice forced her, at 12 years old, to fellate you.
Given that this rape occurred in the building where the young girl lived, it is also worth recalling the words of the Vice President Stock J in his additional judgment in Singh:
“Those comments in the judgment in Chung Chi Wing are not to be taken as suggesting that rape of a girl or a woman in a place familiar to her is less serious than rape elsewhere. As Mr McGowan’s alternative submission recognises, violation of a girl or a woman in her home, or at any other place which has been taken by the victim as a personal sanctuary safe from the intrusion of outsiders, such as at or outside of school, is a serious matter indeed. The home and the school are places to which the householder and the schoolchild respectively come and go on a daily basis, places where they feel, and are entitled to feel, comfortable and are places to which, unless forced by the experience to change home or school, the victim will be returning day by day after the violation of her person, a constant reminder, therefore, of the drama visited upon her by the act of rape.”
In my judgment, the appropriate starting point after trial would have been one of 12 years’ imprisonment in respect of the count of rape. The other count of robbery arises from circumstances which, of themselves, are not especially dramatic or traumatic and which were very much interwoven with your prime object, sexual gratification. Two years’ imprisonment is the appropriate starting point in respect of the robbery.
In regard to mitigation, you did enter a timely plea. You will receive the full one-third reduction which is presently granted to those who plead guilty. That at least has spared the girl the further ordeal of reliving these events in public and in your presence. That, on occasions, is recognised by the courts as justifying a small additional discount. I will acknowledge that practice and reduce the starting point on Count 1 by a further 3 months.
There is nothing further in your personal circumstances or in the circumstances of these offences which justifies any further reduction in sentence.
On Count 1, you are to serve 7 years and 9 months’ imprisonment. On Count 2, you are to serve 1 year and 4 months’ imprisonment. Applying the principle of totality, 9 months of the sentence on Count 2 is to be served consecutively to that on Count 1.
The aggregate period of imprisonment is thus 8 years and 6 months.