Longer jail for raping underage girlfriend
Published on: Saturday, September 24, 2016
Kota Kinabalu: A 22-year-old local jailed one year on three counts of raping his underage girlfriend saw his imprisonment sentence enhanced to three years.High Court Judge Datuk Nurchaya Arshad allowed the prosecution's appeal against the inadequacy of sentence imposed on Rex Roland Roger.She substituted the sentence by ordering the jail term to run consecutively instead of concurrently as ordered by the lower court.
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Rex was on July 11, this year sentenced by the Sessions Court to one year's jail on each count and was ordered to serve the sentence concurrently.He had pleaded guilty to raping the 15-year-old girl three times on Feb 20, March 30 and March 31 in 2015 at a village in Keningau.Deputy Public Prosecutor Aida Fatimah Datuk Abdul Jabar applied to the court to enhance the sentence and for the sentence to run consecutively as the sentence imposed was not sufficient to show the seriousness of the offence.The offence was committed at different times, she submitted, among others, adding that although Rex and the victim were an item, it was statutory rape considering the girl was still a minor.
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Aida said the victim's family had lodged a police report against Rex.Rex, who was not represented, told the court that he would marry the girl once he is released from prison.
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The offence under Section 376 (1) of the Penal Code carries a jail term of up to 20 years and liability of whipping on conviction.In another case, the court reduced the sentence of a 53-year-old man convicted of molesting his 15-year-old niece to three years' jail and one stroke of the rotan from four years jail and four lashes of the cane.The court dismissed the man's appeal against his conviction.The man was on Jan 15, this year found guilty of assaulting the girl with intention to molest her at noon on May 13, 2015 in a vehicle parked by the roadside near the Lok Kawi Zoo.His counsel Peter Marajin submitted that the prosecution failed to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt by failing to call a doctor who had examined the girl who had claimed that the man had inserted his finger into her private part.No doctor testified to prove the case and the prosecution relied on the victim's evidence alone, he said.There was something for the prosecution to hide by not calling the doctor to testify as the defence found out from the medical report which was only supplied to them at the defence stage that it stated no tears and abrasion on the girl's private parts, said Marajin.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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