An unemployed man who claimed to be a member of a triad gang was yesterday sentenced to eight years in prison for threatening to kill a woman and her family before raping her.
Tsang Yau-tik, 29, was found guilty of rape, claiming to be a triad, and criminal intimidation in May, while his co-defendant, Wong Yuen-kwong, 32, pleaded guilty to procurement by threats and was given a 33-month jail sentence.
During the trial, the court heard that Tsang’s victim, X, had repeatedly rejected his advances for years. Then on New Year’s Day 2018, he sent her a threatening WeChat message saying that if she didn’t sleep with him then her family would die.
Worried for her family, X went to meet Tsang at a hotel in Tsuen Wan where he asked her to be his girlfriend again and claimed to be a triad member. Wong also went into the hotel room and also helped threaten X.
Tsang then forced himself onto X, who got pregnant as a result and she had to have an abortion. A DNA test on the fetus found that Tsang was the father.
Explaining his sentence yesterday, High Court Justice Joseph Yau Chi-lap, pointed to a report on the victim, saying that X felt like she was living life in disguise — while she appeared calm and normal on the outside, she was fragile inside, Ming Pao reported.
Yau added that X felt ashamed after the rape, was worried that others would find out about it, that she had lost all trust in men, and felt she no longer deserved to be loved. On top of this, X had even attempted suicide last year.
Yau criticised Tsang for taking advantage of X, and rejected mitigating statements from relatives describing him as a good husband, son, and brother, saying they were nothing more than an attempt to get him to hand down a shorter sentence.
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