SINGAPORE: A judge has called for a reformative training suitability report in the case of a young man who was one of four brothers to sexually assault their biological sister.
Such a report assesses the suitability of sentencing an offender to be detained in a reformative training centre, where young offenders are rehabilitated in a structured approach.
The offender, now 20, was 16 or 17 when he sexually assaulted his sister, who is now 14.
The girl was one of three girls in a family that had seven children.
The offender is the second youngest of the four brothers. His brothers are aged 23, 22 and 18 respectively.
They were between the ages of 13 and 21 when they committed the alleged offences against their sister between 2018 and 2022.
The offences took place despite their parents separating the children into bedrooms by gender and forbidding the boys entry.
At the time of his offending, the offender in this case knew of the abuse by two older brothers against his sister.
“NOT A CLEAR CASE”
Justice Hoo Sheau Peng said this was “not a clear case” where the sentencing option of reformative training should be ruled out.
At the same time, she posed several questions to both the prosecution and defence for them to answer on the case to aid sentencing.
These include how long the man’s period of offending was – a year as the prosecution contended, or less as the defence argued?
Another question was the harm caused to the victim – there were two new psychological reports that surfaced after the guilty plea hearing.
The court previously heard from the girl’s victim impact statement dated January 2024, that the girl was separated from her family and had not seen her younger sisters for a year.
She also felt that her parents would vent their frustration at her and that her mother blames her for what happened.
Parties came to agreement to some other questions raised in the hearing.
For example, the prosecution accepted the defence’s contention that the offender might not have known the nature of the sexual acts involved by his other brothers against his sister before he sexually abused her.
It was instead described generally as “sexual stuff”. The offender also knew only of one occasion of offending by each brother.
While Justice Hoo called for an RTC suitability report, she stressed that this did not mean RTC would be the sentence to be meted out.
Deputy Public Prosecutors Muhamad Imaduddien, Lim Ying Min and M Kayal Pillay are pushing for eight to nine years’ jail and 12 strokes of the cane.
It was defence lawyer Ashvin Hariharan from IRB Law who asked for a reformative training suitability report to be prepared for his client.
Sentencing will be carried out at a later date.
The cases for the remaining brothers are pending.