Hong Kong judge hails incest victim as ‘beacon of courage’ for standing up to her ‘beast’ father, who is jailed at High Court
- Father sentenced to 17½ years for sex attacks in Hong Kong on daughter when she was aged nine to 22
- Judge slams as ‘utterly abhorrent’ the defendant using his position to ‘debase his own flesh and blood’
A judge has called a Hong Kong incest victim a “beacon of courage” to other girls for standing up to her abusive father, who was jailed for 17½ years on Wednesday.
The 59-year-old truck driver sexually assaulted his daughter from the age of nine in a campaign of abuse spanning 13 years, the High Court heard.
Named only as A to protect the victim’s identity, the man isolated the child when she came to Hong Kong aged seven from mainland China, exerting “suffocating control” over his victim.
That included threatening to send triads after any boy she went out with, monitoring all her phone calls and systematically driving a rift between the child and her mother, to the point that the latter became suicidal.
Madam Justice Esther Toh Lye-ping said it took “superhuman courage” from the child to break the chain of these “totally shameless acts”, calling it “utterly abhorrent to think a father could take advantage of his position to humiliate and debase his own flesh and blood”.
“If one day I would meet her I would shake her hand to show my utmost respect,” the judge said, describing the victim as “a beacon of courage” and an example for girls suffering sexual abuse.
“It is rare, in my many years on the bench, to encounter such a flagrant abuse of a father on his daughter – and for such a long time,” the judge of 23 years said.