HKSAR v. Wong Wai Hung

HCCC 410/2015

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CRIMINAL CASE NO 410 OF 2015

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Transcript of the Audio Recording
of the Sentence in the above Case

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COURT: You have pleaded guilty to one count of indecent assault, one count of attempting to have unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of 16, and one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with the same girl.

The victim was 13 at all the material time and a schoolmate of your son. You got to know her through your son and started to buy her toys, flowers and a watch. You gave her lifts from school to home and asked her to be your Goddaughter. You offered your vacant flat for her to study with your son during examination period.

Her mother trusted you because of your job as a police officer. You abused that trust. You sexually assaulted her, kissed her on the lips and touched her breasts in your car. And about a month later in that flat of yours inside the bedroom you attempted to penetrate her without a contraceptive. Your later WhatsApp with her showed that she was worried and you assured her that there was no penetration.

On your birthday, you had sexual intercourse with her and you kept the piece of bloodstained tissue paper in your locker back at the police station. On that occasion you also did not use any contraceptive. About half a month later her mother was told about the relationship and eventually a report was made to the police.

This case involved a young victim. I have referred myself to the case of HKSAR v Chan Ching Ho [2000] 3 HKLRD 476 where the Court of Appeal laid down sentencing consideration for sexual offences involving young victims. The first factor is to deter others; secondly, to mark the public abhorrence of such crimes; and, thirdly, to redress the grievance suffered by the victim, her relatives and friends.

Defendant, you were 39 years old at that time. Your wife was pregnant with your youngest daughter and you already had two sons. You befriended the victim at first and eventually started courting her, buying her gifts.

According to your psychological report, you were clearly aware of the moral and legal issues, but you simply chose to ignore them and carried on exploiting her naivety and inexperience whilst she trusted you as the father of her best friend, as a fatherly figure which she lacked due to material disharmony between her parents. You made use of that and caused her to succumb to your dominance.

Her mother’s trust in you as a police officer turned out to be her nightmare. You indecently assaulted the victim only 10 days before the birth of your youngest daughter. You attempted to have sex with her when your wife suffered from postnatal depression. You celebrated your birthday with the victim and took her virginity. At about that time your wife was admitted to Castle Peak Hospital for treatment.

Your relationship with the victim straddled between May 2014 to April 2015.

The aggravating features in this case includes the following:

(1) A young victim was involved and the age gap between you and that young victim.

(2) The conduct of you which led to the offences spread over a period of nearly a year whilst the three offences happened nearly a month apart in‑between.

(3) Your trusted relationship with the victim’s family.

(4) Unprotected sex.

You have abused her innocence and groomed her for your own sexual gratification. You are not suffering from any mental or psychological disorder and you realised that the relationship was wrong but nonetheless went along with it reckless as to its consequence.

You gave her a most nasty introduction to the sins of the flesh and kept the by-product of that as a trophy in your locker back at the police station. I do not believe you when you say you kept the tissue to represent how much you treasured her. Had you had any empathy and you genuinely cared for her, you would not have taken her virginity when she was just a child and you would not have taken the risk by not wearing a condom.

Your acts were not just bad judgment on your part. Being a law enforcement officer yourself you should have known better, but rather you chose the course you did. You allowed yourself to stray into a so-called relation recklessly without heed to the consequence. You brought shame to your own family and the force you worked for. You deprive your children of a normal home and love of a father during their formative years because you are going to prison. Being a father yourself, you had no conscience to consider for one moment what would your reaction be if the same should happen to your own daughter when she grew to become a teenager. You seemingly did not practice what the famous Chinese idiom says: “Do not do unto others as you do not want others do unto you”, 己所不欲, 勿施於人.

According to the victim impact report, the victim is full of self-guilt and blames herself for letting these happen and for ruining your career and your family. She has to sever her ties with her established network, the familiar environment and her classmates, especially your son who used to be her best friend. She loses trust in others and has a very low self-image. This will no doubt affect her interpersonal relationships. She is assessed to be traumatised with irreparable psychological damage, and unless she worked hard to resolve the aftermath of this trauma she is likely to be scarred for life.

Whilst you have worked very hard to get to where you are and have been in gainful and stable employment for the past 20 years and, indeed, had a promotion early last year, you have thrown them all away. You destroy your own life, your own career that you have so industriously built up and also you destroyed two families.

For offences of this nature with all the aggravating features for a man of hitherto good character, I consider the following the starting points appropriate for the individual sentences: indecent assault, 12 months; attempted unlawful sexual intercourse, 2 years; unlawful sexual intercourse, 3 years’ imprisonment.

The greatest mitigating factor is one of a guilty plea which spared the victim the ordeal of testifying in court. I shall give you no more than the one-third discount for your guilty plea. The resulting individual sentences are as follows.

For the indecent assault charge, 8 months’ imprisonment; for the attempted unlawful sexual intercourse, 16 months’ imprisonment; and for the unlawful sexual intercourse, 2 years’ imprisonment.

I consider the overall culpability warrants a global sentence of 5½ years, reduced to 44 months on a plea. Hence, I order 14 months of the attempted charge and 6 months of the indecent assault charge to run consecutively to the unlawful sexual intercourse charge sentence, so totalling 3 years and 8 months.