A 48-year-old Singaporean man is currently awaiting sentencing after he pled guilty to offenses including threats to kill his daughter and have his mother-in-law’s tongue cut off.
The man, who cannot be named to protect his daughter’s identity, pled guilty to four charges of voluntarily causing hurt to his 43-year-old wife and 15-year-old daughter on Feb. 16.
The couple is in the midst of divorce proceedings.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Teo Siu Ming yesterday asked for the man to a sentence between four months and 12 weeks and six months and 16 weeks in jail.
“A very tragic case”
According to court documents, one incident occurred in August 2020 when the man flared up at his daughter after she did not return his calls while he was overseas a month before. He hit her five times on the head and threatened to punch and kill her if she were to do it again.
The man also tried to punch his wife after he asked her to pay back the S$10,000 he gave her to renovate her shop. When she blocked the punch, he pulled her by the collar, choked her and pushed her against the wall.
Fortunately, she managed to break free and escape the flat.
Fast forward to a year later in June 2021, the wife and her three daughters had moved out of the flat to stay in a church.
But the harassment continued when the man visited the wife’s workplace multiple times, tried to gain entry into the church and spam-called her a total of 141 times.
When the wife called him to stop harassing her, he escalated matters and threatened to pay off people to cut her mother’s tongue and assault her mother with a pole.
According to the court, Deputy Public Prosecutor Teo said that while the accused has classified his anger-fuelled actions as the conduct of “a desperate father” trying to get his family back, he “fails to see that he is the author of his own misery.”
Defense lawyer Noor Mohamed Marican sought a S$12,500 fine for the man and defended by saying that it was a “family matter.”
“This is a very tragic case of a father who was not able to cope or manage with the family problems he had. He may have gone a bit overboard, but he cared for his family,” he said.
The case will continue May 9.
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