The defendant pleaded guilty to four counts of indecent assault. The Summary of Facts which was admitted by the defendant revealed the following: between the year 1999 and 2000 the defendant came to acquaint with the victim’s mother. He often visited their home. The victim lived with her mother, her grandmother and was only 10 then.
During one summer afternoon, whilst the victim was at home with her blind grandmother, the defendant started to sexually abuse the victim. He pressed his body against her buttocks and squeezed her breasts with both his hands. This incident lasted several minutes.
Later on in another summer evening, whilst the mother was busy engaging in household chores, the defendant once again sexually abused the victim by putting his hand underneath the victim’s underpants and touching her private parts. This incident lasted over 10-odd minutes.
On two other subsequent occasions, the defendant again sexually molested the victim at her own home. All these incidents had not been revealed until the victim reached her 20s.
Despite the time lapse, the defendant’s misdeeds have left the victim with a significant emotional and psychological impact. Psychology report indicates that the victim has been suffering from various psychological and psychiatric problems that require clinical attention.
On the other hand, psychology report of the defendant concludes that he had difficulty maintaining control over his sexual impulses and acted on without thinking the consequences of his actions.
According to the psychologist, the defendant was also found to be defensive and uncooperative and tended to minimise his responsibilities. The psychologist, nevertheless, concludes that the defendant’s risk of sexual re-offending was assessed to be low to moderate.
In this case, despite Miss Chow’s efforts, I am of the view that apart from the defendant’s plea, there is little mitigation.
Count 4 is the most serious one amongst the four. The victim was only 10 at the time, the abuse can hardly be described as trivial. Having considered the relationship the defendant had with the victim at the time, I am of the view that the appropriate starting point for this count, (i.e, Count 4), is one of 3 years’ imprisonment.
Insofar as the other three incidences are concerned, their degrees of seriousness are less. As such for Count 1, given the abuse was less intrusive, a starting point of 18 months is adopted. For the remaining two counts, again because of the relatively less serious nature of these two counts, a starting point of 9 months is adopted respectively for each.
The defendant will be given the usual one-third discount for his plea.
Having considered the overall criminality in this case and the totality principle in sentence, 6 months of Count 2 and 3 months each of Count 6 and 8 are ordered to run
consecutively to the 2 years imposed on Count 4.
In total, the defendant is sentenced to 3 years’ imprisonment.