Father who repeatedly raped daughter jailed for 13 years by Hong Kong court
Man blamed attacks, which took place over period of 12 years, on lack of intimacy with his sick wife
A father who repeatedly raped his daughter over the course of 12 years – starting when she was 10 years old – and later blaming a lack of intimacy with his wife, was jailed for more than a decade on Tuesday.
Sentencing the man to 13 years and nine months, Mr Justice Albert Wong Sung-hau said A – whose identity cannot be revealed to protect his victim’s anonymity – treated his daughter “as a sex toy” for years.
The judge said the “evil act” did not stop even after the girl grew up because the man continued to think of her as submissive. The last assault took place when the daughter was 22.
The man, 50, previously pleaded guilty to five counts of rape before he was sentenced by the High Court on Tuesday. Between 2005 and 2017, he raped his daughter, X, five times. During four of the attacks he did not wear a condom.
“Most of the offences were at the expense of the growth and development of X,” the judge said on Tuesday, calling it a “serious and shameful” case.
In mitigation, his lawyers said A had had an unsatisfactory sex life with his wife, in part because of her ill health. The series of attacks came after he was aroused one time when he hugged his daughter.
“The sexual relations between him and his wife is no excuse,” the judge said.
The man, a hotel chef, kept his head low in the dock as he heard the post-traumatic symptoms he had inflicted on his daughter, including suicidal thoughts which required further psychological treatment.
The court heard the first assault took place in July 2005 at the family home, on a public housing estate. While X’s mother was sleeping in her bedroom, A raped X on the living room sofa. Three more assaults followed while X was between the ages of 13 and 16 years old.
The judge said that, just as X hoped it was all over, the defendant raped her again when she was 22 years old in 2017, some seven years after the previous attack.
The mother eventually found out and reported the matter to the police.
On Tuesday, Wong also heard A had since become a Christian, prompting him to read A a verse from the bible.
“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness,” he said, quoting from Ephesians.
