Man jailed 15 years for raping daughter
KUALA LUMPUR: A foreign worker agent was jailed 15 years after he was found guilty of raping his only daughter who was 12 when she was first assaulted.
Ampang Sessions Court Judge Chan Jit Li also ordered the 53-year-old man to be whipped 10 times.
Chan handed down the decision after ruling that the defence failed to raise reasonable doubt in the case and held that the sentence was to run from yesterday.
Clad in blue shirt and dark pants, the man appeared calm and emotionless after the judge meted out the sentence.
Also present in court were his family members.
The man was charged with raping his 12-year-old daughter who is now 19, at a house in Ampang Jaya between 2006 and March 2012.
The charge under Section 376(3) of the Penal Code (Act 574) carries a maximum of 30 years’ jail and a maximum of 10 times of whipping, if convicted.
The court had also recorded the Victim Impact Statement (VIS) from the girl but it was done on camera.
Those present in court – including the victim’s family members and members of the media – were not allowed to be in court when the VIS was recorded.
Earlier, Deputy Public Prosecutor Ummi Aliza Ab Kadir urged the court to impose a harsher sentence as the man had committed a serious crime, noting that the case was of public interest.
Ummi Aliza said the man was the girl’s father and as a father, it was his responsibility to protect his child’s safety and dignity.
“His act will not only jeopardise the victim’s future and deteriorate relations between other family members.
“The girl was traumatised and (this) will cause a long-term effect for the rest of her life. He raped the girl since she was 12,” she said.
In asking for leniency, the man’s counsel Mohd Zulfiqri Zakaria said his client had four children, his wife suffered from diabetes and there was no violence committed.
The court also rejected an application by Mohd Zulfiqri for a stay.
A total of nine prosecution witnesses and three defence witnesses testified in the trial which began last year.
Ummi Aliza told reporters later that the girl told the court the incident had caused her to seek psychiatric treatment at Malacca Hospital.
The Star
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