A cobbler known to set up his makeshift stall around Commonwealth MRT has been sentenced to jail and caning for raping his 13-year-old goddaughter as well as sexually penetrating her with his finger.
43-year-old Terence Ng Kean Meng was sentenced yesterday in court, set to be imprisoned for 14 years and received 14 strokes of the cane, Channel NewsAsia reports.
He had first met the victim when the girl was loitering near his stall in October 2013. The girl had ran away from home, and was afraid to return. Ng accompanied her back to her parents, and offered to be her godfather.
The girl would meet Ng almost daily at his stall, and though their relationship was initially platonic, the cobbler developed a sexual attraction for the victim when he started taking her home to his Tanglin Halt flat.
It was on Oct 29 that the girl complained about feeling unwell, and Ng rubbed ointment on her stomach. He then asked if she wanted to have sexual intercourse, to which she agreed, and Ng inserted his finger into her vagina.
They had consensual sex over the next few months, performing intercourse at his home and an ancestral temple at Commonwealth.
The victim’s mother died shortly after the trysts, and the depressed girl confided about Ng’s misdeed to a person at school. She was told to file a police report, and the cobbler was arrested four days after the report.
He was liable to be convicted with statutory rape — with or without the woman’s consent — and the girl was under 14 years of age.
In court, it was revealed that a psychiatric evaluation on Ng showed that he was behind his peers in terms of physical and mental development, and he only had Primary 6 educational qualifications. A psychiatric report however found that Ng was not suffering from any mental illness or intellectual disability.
For each charge of statutory rape with a minor, Ng could have been jailed for up to 20 years, as well as a fine and caning.
Photo: Luca Sartoni via Flickr
