A total of 15 other similar charges of sexual abuse were taken into consideration during sentencing.

Both the man and his niece cannot be named under a court order to protect the victim’s identity.

The court heard that the girl had a very close relationship with her uncle, the offender, as well as his wife, who were also her godparents.

Around 2016, when the girl was five or six years old, she was in a bedroom at her grandparents’ home with her uncle when he kissed her on the lips.

She did not resist because she did not understand why he kissed her, but this started to happen on several more occasions.

From 2017, the girl regularly stayed overnight at her uncle’s home after begging her mother and stepfather for permission to do so on Fridays and weekends.

During these overnight stays, she would share a bed with her uncle in his bedroom while her aunt slept in another room with her two children.

Even though the girl’s parents did not approve of the frequent visits and were uncomfortable about her sharing a room with her uncle, they allowed her to stay overnight because they trusted that he would not act inappropriately, court documents stated.

Around June 2017, the sexual abuse began when the girl’s uncle performed a sexual act on her.

He repeated this whenever his niece stayed over, often committing these sexual acts at night or in the afternoons when she was in his bedroom.

The man would also photograph what he did, and his niece’s private parts, with his mobile phone for his own viewing pleasure.

In early 2017, the man showed his niece a pornographic video.

On June 30 that year, he raped her when she was seven years old, after using a sex toy on her at one point.

When his niece protested because she was in pain, he ignored her.

The man also took several photographs of the sexual abuse with his mobile phone and instructed her not to tell anyone what had happened, saying it was their secret.

Despite being constantly abused sexually, the girl kept quiet because she was afraid of upsetting her uncle and that he would treat her differently if she did not allow him to have sex with her.

The sexual abuse continued into 2021 when she was 11 and started to have her period.

During one of these occasions, her uncle would tell her that she was as good as her aunt at performing a sex act, and promised to give her S$10 (US$7.52) to S$20 (US$15.04) for it.

Even then, the girl still did not tell anyone about the sexual abuse because she was afraid that no one would believe her.

She also feared that her uncle would go to prison, her relationship with her aunt would suffer, and she would be removed from her family and placed in a girls’ home.

Because of that, she continued to give in to her uncle’s sexual demands even though she did not want to engage in any of the sexual acts.

Court documents stated that the girl had pleaded with her uncle on several occasions to stop on the basis that her aunt was a “very good wife”, but he told her that his love for his family was “different” from his love for her.

He even told the girl that he was her boyfriend and that she should not have any other boyfriend.

As the girl started menstruating, she grew increasingly worried about getting pregnant.

In October 2021, the girl confided in two friends that her uncle had raped her since she was about seven years old.

At her friends’ urging, she told the school counsellor who immediately informed the school management and the authorities were alerted.

The girl’s uncle was arrested five days later in October and 131 media discs were seized from his bedroom, many of which contained child pornography.

He admitted that they all belonged to him and was aware that about half of the content on the discs depicted underage sex.

A thumb drive seized from his possession was also found to contain about 12,000 child abuse images.

During his video-recorded interviews with the police, the man claimed that his niece had actively seduced him and that she would initiate sexual contact or have sex with him.

He also claimed that she would tell him that having sex with him felt “very shiok (pleasurable)” and accused her of lying about “a lot of things” in her report about the sexual abuse.

In a report from the Institute of Mental Health, senior consultant Parvathy Pathy noted that the girl had reported emotional symptoms such as mood swings, stress, insomnia, thoughts of suicide, and flashbacks of the sexual assaults.

The girl’s family had observed that her grades dropped sharply in 2019 and she had displayed hyper-sexualised behaviour that was abnormal for children of her age.

This related to incidents where she would use words of a sexual nature and was watching pornography.

The girl has since been attending counselling sessions and speaking to a psychologist to cope with the psychological impact of the abuse, but continues to be emotionally volatile.

Seeking a jail term of between 28 and 30 years with 24 strokes of the cane, the prosecution argued that this case featured all the hallmarks of aggravated sexual abuse.

These included a profound abuse of trust, premeditation, a long offending period, and severe harm to the victim.

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Joseph Gwee said: “The age of seven is significant for most children but for the victim, that age marked the start of her four-year-long torment at the hands of her uncle and godfather whom she loved and trusted.”

He added that instead of acting as a parental figure to the victim on the overnight visits, the uncle violated her trust in him and preyed on her week after week, even instructing her to keep quiet about the sexual abuse.

In his sentencing remarks, Justice S Mohan said that the horrendous actions of the uncle had destroyed the victim’s innocence and childhood.

Even though the man said that what he did was wrong, not once in a letter that he had submitted to the court seeking leniency did he apologise to the victim or seek her forgiveness, the judge noted.

For each charge of rape, the man could have been jailed for up to 20 years with up to 12 strokes of the cane.