Singapore President wants convicted rapists above 50 to be canned for sexually assaulting their wards

Singapore's President Halimah Yacob on Monday called for convicted rapists aged 50 years or older not to be spared caning and has expressed dismay at recent cases of girls being raped in their own homes by fathers.

Under Singapore's Penal Code, a convicted rapist can be jailed for up to 20 years and fined or caned. Those above 50 years of age and above cannot be sentenced to caning but can be imprisoned longer in lieu of corporal punishment.

Last week, a 54-year-old man was sentenced to jail in the country for molesting his daughter repeatedly from when she was 10 years old, Channel News Asia reported.

In a Facebook post, President Yacob wrote, "Rapists should not be spared the cane just because they are fifty years old. It's ironic that they could escape from the pain caused by caning despite the lifetime of severe trauma and irreparable damage that they cruelly inflicted on their victims which will last a lifetime." 

"In some cases, the rapes were committed earlier but reported only after the perpetrator reached fifty years old. It's time that we review this law," the post said. "It's our duty to protect our young and we must not fail them," it added.

In September last year, Members of Parliament suggested that the age limit for caning be raised. Parliamentarian Murali Pillai said, I don't see why Parliament should presume in favour of a repeat sex offender that he is not fit to be caned when he is clearly fit enough to commit such heinous acts."

Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said: there was no reason" to increase the age limit for caning, noting the "significantly lower" number of men over age 50 and arrested for serious offences that attract caning.

In November, a man admitted to trying to rape his four-year-old daughter twice, while another father went on trial for allegedly grooming his daughter over eight years before raping her when she was 12.

"I find the recent spate of cases involving rapes of children in their own homes by their male relatives highly disturbing and sickening," the president wrote.

"We need to better protect our children from such sexual predators," she added.

She said severe punishments for convicted offenders were important but not sufficient.

"We need to look at other ways to help our children and stop them from falling prey to such rapists," the president wrote.

"I worry that there could be many more unreported cases. I can't even begin to imagine how much pain and damage these young victims had to suffer."

Yacob wrote that the reported cases follow a certain pattern. The victims had been groomed by sex predators who were either their fathers, stepfather, or other male relatives; and from a very young age so that they thought the "sickening" acts committed against them - for years in some cases - were normal.

Quite a number of victims only discover that such acts are wrong when they attend sex education classes much later in school, she noted.

"The sex predators had preyed on their innocence to persuade the victims that the perversion was alright," she said.

Even when they knew it was not right, some victims were reluctant to complain for fear of breaking up the family or losing the main breadwinner, while others were threatened and intimidated into silence, Yacob added.

The president said she hopes organisations in Singapore that deal with domestic violence work together with government agencies to look at ways to better protect children from sexual abuse in the home.