Monster.

“Monster”. 

That’s what high court judge Chan Seng Onn called a 27-year-old jobless man who forced his wife into prostitution, serving 138 men, so as to pay for his son’s diapers (among other expenses), forced his 6-year-old daughter to perform oral sex on him, and sexually abused his niece in a hotel just before she took her PSLE exams. 

And his own mother reported him to the police in Aug 2016 for sexually assaulting his daughter.

He got 25.5 years and maximum 24 stokes of the cane, but what he did to his own wife, daughter and niece would scar them for a long time. 

The prosecution described the case as “the first of its kind” and here is how unprecedented the case turns out to be. A brief history will suffice.

The man was violent to his wife. He beat her even before marriage in 2012. The beating started in 2009 and “increased in severity and frequency, and persisted while she was pregnant. From June 2015, he assualted her at least once a week.”

She was so terrorised by him that she did not dare to report the violence to her family members. He threatened to kill her if she did. 

Between 2010 and 2015, she was working as a receptionist and office assistant, and gave all her earning of $1,800 to him. 

When she stopped working, and asked him to get a job, he rejected it. He then forced her to be a prostitute. He told her to charge $80 to $100 for one hour and $120 for two.

And to advertise her services, he taught her to use online monikers like “Single Mum” and “to respond to interested customers with details such as her bust size.”

She was expected to make up for any shortfall in the quota she was unable to meet the day before. 

And “on one occasion, he insisted that she provide sexual services to a customer who turned out to be her classmate. When she failed to persuade her classmate to take part in a threesome, he punched her and hit her with a dumb-bell. Desperate to appease him, she tried to look for more customers online.”

At one time, just after having sex with his wife, he called out to his six-year-old daughter and forced her to perform oral sex on him. At that time, he already suspected that he had a sexually transmitted disease. 

As for his 13-year-old niece, it started when he was angry with his wife for falling short of the quota for the day. She tried to explain to him that she fell asleep due to fatigue. He then assualted her and forced her to bring her niece to him. At that time, she was studying for her PSLE. 

After he threatened her, she complied and waited outside her niece’s school. She then brought her to him. At that time, the family were putting up at balestier hotel after his mother chased him out. 

After she brought her niece into the hotel room, she asked her to shower. She then handed the room key to her husband and he undressed himself. When his niece came out of the shower, he hugged her and removed her T-shirt and bra, groped and kissed her.

“He also placed a pillow over her face to muffle her screams but panicked when she stopped struggling. He then ended the assault and notified his wife.”

Despite the assault, she returned to school and the principal made arrangement for her to take her PSLE. 

One final point...what does the psychiatric evaluation say about the man then? Is he labouring under some sort of mental illness so crippling that he cannot control his actions and perverted desires?

No, he was not. He had unrelated anti-social personality traits and the report noted that “he was somewhat boastful of his sexual exploits.”

Lesson? I hesitate to offer any. 

You can never put into words the trauma the women in his life has suffered under his hands. As a husband, a father, an uncle and a son, he had not only failed in his duties horrifically, he had become the predatory monster in their lives. 

The judge said: “The sordid sexual depravity of his transgressions is unprecedented and involves him sexually exploiting the three most vulnerable women in his life - whom he had every responsibility to protect.”

I do not have much of a lesson here because I used to think that every man has a redeeming quality, even those on death row. And I am not talking about people suffering under some form of diminished responsibility due to their compromised mental state. 

But recently, I had to confront my greatest fear about humanity, and that is, a handful of us will go into their grave unchanged, and that is not because they are sick in the mind. 

It is because they are, to borrow the words of the psychiatric report, “somewhat boastful of (their) sexual exploits.” Here is what I mean. 

Socrates once said that an unexamined life is not worth living as you will never see the need to repent if you are not even aware that what you have said or done is wrong. 

That’s a life unexamined, and whether it is worth living depends on the people (or loved ones) who have to suffer under your so called blissful unawareness. 

The above case makes you think about this Socrates’ statement about some people. The remarks in the report about him being boastful about his sexual exploits makes you think about whether he is aware of his monstrous ways. In other words, it makes you think whether he was at all repentant or remorseful. 

I always feel that what is truly redeeming about a man or woman is his or her willingness to take that road to redemption. It is a huge step for us. A step whereby you confront yourself, your wrongs, the hurts you have committed, and you make amends thereafter. 

The question I struggle here is this, what if a man does not even know that he is wrong, not to mention that he is a monster? 

What if he thinks he has done no wrong that requires him to say sorry? 

Sadly, I believe there are a handful like that in this world, and they will never learn even when they are confronted by their own mortality.