In one of the more appalling crimes of recent years that left prosecutors at a loss for words, a 34-year-old man has received a hefty sentence for raping his biological mother back in 2013.
Channel NewsAsia reported that the man, who cannot be named due to a gag order, was slapped with 16 years in prison and 18 strokes of the cane yesterday for the heinous crime against the very woman who gave birth to him.
In court, a psychiatrist testified that the woman, 58, suffered from Acute Stress Disorder due to the traumatic experience.
It was on Oct. 4, 2013 in the family’s one-bedroom flat that the crime took place. Five months prior to the incident, the mother had taken pity on her son, who had nowhere to live, and convinced her second husband to let the accused live with them in the tiny apartment.
The victim was asleep alone at home when her son returned at about 2:30am. The rape was carried out then, in which the accused restrained her and forced her to touch him sexually despite her pleas for him to stop.
The distraught mother fled the house to seek refuge in her daughter-in-law’s house and recorded a call she made to her son later on about the incident. The six-minute phone conversation, according to The Straits Times, involved the victim repeatedly asking why he did what he did, to which her son replied that he liked it and wanted it again.
“Why you force me in the morning just now?… There are pretty women you can get, why like this?… (I am) your mother you know. How boy? In this world, can something like this happen?”, the mother said, as transcribed by ST.
The defence argued that there was no mention of the word “rape” in the recording — the mother used the Malay word “kacau” (disturb) instead. The victim testified during the trial that she used “kacau” because she was sad and confused at the time of the call.
Forensic examination also seemed to have screwed up following the incident — a vaginal swab taken from the woman at the Singapore General Hospital was not tested for semen by the Health Sciences Authority because it was placed in a wet tube, a wrong medium.
Another argument by the defence was that both the mother and her husband had colluded to make a false report against the accused to get him out of the flat for good. At one point during the trial, the accused claimed that a confession was forced out of him through physical intimidation by the cops.
The prosecution, however, responded to the “outrageous submission”, arguing that the victim “learnt what it meant to be re-victimized” when she was subjected to “scandalous questions designed to attack her, to (portray her as) a loose woman, a terrible mother and a liar”, CNA reported.
“For all the vastness of the English language, there is simply no word that even comes remotely close to capturing the horror that would have washed over the victim as she was cruelly and relentlessly sexually assaulted by (the son) she gave life to 30 years earlier,” said the prosecution.
