COURT: I do not propose to keep the two of you in suspense. You, Ken Wong, are going to prison for 9 years. You, Winnie Wong, are going to prison for 2 years and 6 months. When I have left court, your lawyers will explain to you, when you are likely to be released, bearing in mind the rules for remission of sentence and the length of time you had been in custody, but it looks as if you, Winnie Wong, will be released very soon, if not now. Ken Wong, I propose to deal with you first, and that means that you, Winnie Wong, may sit down for the time being.
Ken Wong, there is no doubt that you have an unhealthy interest in young girls. The week before you committed these offences, you were using a search engine to find out about “Indecent assaults on young girls”. I do not know whether you were looking up how much you could get for selling photos of young girls being sexually abused or what the sentence might be for someone convicted of such abuse, or whether you were just looking for stories about or photos of young girls being sexually abused. But the fact that you told the police following your arrest that you could not control yourself when you saw this young girl tells us all we need to know about you.
There is some evidence that you targeted this particular girl. Winnie Wong told the police that over the previous few days you had repeatedly mentioned going to the building where the girl’s flat was to ask her to let you in because there was something there which you had to get back. But what Winnie Wong told the police in your absence is not admissible evidence against you. I therefore put it out of my mind, and I propose to sentence you on the basis that your abuse of this girl was opportunistic. You only intended to burgle her flat and steal anything of value, but decided to take advantage of her when you saw her there.
The ordeal to which you subjected the girl was truly shocking. She was only 12 years old at the time whereas you were 47. The age difference between you and her was considerable, which itself is an aggravating factor. I have read the psychological report on the girl which was prepared 18 months or so after her encounter with you. It was not thought that she needed professional help at that stage, and the view was that the trauma of the incident had predominantly subsided. However, it was noted that “her perception towards others”, which I take to mean how she reacts to other people, had changed, and the psychologist could not discount the possibility that her relationships with people in the future will be affected. But as the Court of Appeal said in HKSAR v Kong Yun Chiu [2007] 4 HKC 391 at para 11, “the trauma caused to a child by an indecent assault, and the long-term adverse impact, is difficult to calculate but trauma may safely be assumed in the vast majority of cases, perhaps all”.
In addition to the disparity in your age and hers, there are a number of other aggravating factors. In the first place, the incident lasted for some time. Winnie Wong told the police that it lasted for 10 to 20 minutes before she left, and although that again is not admissible evidence against you, it sounds about right going on what you did. Moreover, the incident involved things which the girl would have found particularly disgusting. You did not just lick her vagina. You forced your penis into her mouth, you ejaculated while it was in her mouth, and you made her swallow your semen. The girl said that this part of the incident lasted 5 to 10 minutes. Those few minutes would have seemed like a lifetime to her. In addition, after you left her flat, you returned moments later to tell her that she was not to tell anyone what had happened. You threatened to cause trouble for her mother if she did.
What is more, you filmed what you did. The Court of Appeal has had something to say about that as well. This is what it said in HKSAR v Chow Yuen Fai [2010] 1 HKLRD 138 at para 26:
“The trauma, distress and psychological harm is considerably magnified if, as in the present case, a record (by way of photographs and videos) is taken of the sexual act or acts in question. Both the victim, and his or her family, may well be haunted for many years with the knowledge that the act or acts in question, regarded both as embarrassing and shameful in the extreme quite apart from being illegal, are somehow recorded, and with the possibility that they may even surface when the victim reaches later life. This feature we regard as a particularly serious one.”
Your filming of the girl was even more serious because you did not film her just to view the footage yourself. You wanted to share the footage with people who were prepared to pay for it. Finally, this all happened in her own home - a place where she should have felt safe. That, too, is likely to have a lasting impact on her.
I turn then to the three offences which encapsulate your offending against the girl. The charge of indecent conduct towards a child under the age of 16 covers the most serious aspect of your abuse of the girl, namely, what you did with your penis. The charge of indecent assault relates to your licking of her vagina. But this was all one incident, and I therefore propose to pass what I regard to be the appropriate sentence for the whole of your abuse of the girl - save for your filming of her - on the charge of indecent conduct towards a child under the age of 16 (for which the maximum sentence is one of 10 years’ imprisonment), and not to pass a separate penalty on the charge of indecent assault.
There is no tariff for the offence of indecent conduct towards a child under the age of 16 given the very different circumstances in which the offence can be committed. Nor is there a tariff for the offence of making child pornography (for which the maximum sentence is 8 years’ imprisonment) when it accompanies a serious sexual assault such as in the present case, but it unquestionably calls for a consecutive sentence. In Chow Yuen Fai, the Court of Appeal did not disturb the sentence of 1 year and 4 months’ imprisonment (based on a starting point of 2 years’ imprisonment) which the judge passed in that case in circumstances broadly similar to those in the present case, but it has to be said that the court in that case was dealing with three separate incidents, not just the one. It is true that the judge made the defendant in that case serve the sentence concurrently with his other sentences, but that was because the judge enhanced the sentences for the offences he was sentencing the defendant for to reflect the fact that the defendant had filmed what he did. I have not taken your filming of the girl into account when deciding on the sentence for the offence of indecent conduct towards a girl under 16.
I turn to the charge of burglary. This was a domestic burglary, aggravated by the fact that there were two offenders and the child of the occupants was at home, and at home alone. It calls for a separate consecutive sentence.
Drawing all these strands together, I take 10½ years’ imprisonment as my overall starting point for the offences relating to your abuse of the girl, broken down as follows: 9 years’ imprisonment for the offence of indecent conduct towards a child under 16 (as this was as close as you can get to the worst case of its type), no separate penalty for the offence of indecent assault, and 18 months’ imprisonment to be served consecutively for the offence of making child pornography. For the offence of burglary, I take 3 years’ imprisonment to be served consecutively as my starting point.
When I stand back and look at the totality of your offending, a total starting point of 13 years and 6 months’ imprisonment is not, I think, too long. It adequately reflects the gravity of the totality of your offending, which must be reduced by one-third to 9 years’ imprisonment to reflect your pleas of guilty on the return date when you were committed to the High Court for sentence, and thereby relieved the girl of having to relive her ordeal by having to give evidence at your trial.
Accordingly, the sentences I pass on you are as follows: 6 years’ imprisonment for the offence of indecent conduct towards a child under 16; no separate penalty for the offence of indecent assault; 12 months’ imprisonment for the offence of making child pornography, to be served consecutively to the sentence for the offence of indecent conduct towards a child under the age of 16; and 2 years’ imprisonment for the burglary to be served consecutively to these two sentences. That makes 9 years’ imprisonment in all. You may sit down while I deal with Winnie Wong.
Winnie Wong, would you please stand up? The prosecution accepts that you did nothing to encourage Ken Wong to abuse the girl. But what I said to him about the burglary applies to you. I take as my starting point a sentence of 3 years’ imprisonment for that offence. The amount of heroin you had on you was consistent with it being for your own use, which is why you are only charged with possession of it. Possession of hard drugs for one’s own consumption is nevertheless serious. There is always the risk that you will share it with someone else or sell it. Having said that, the amount that you had was relatively small, less than a gramme, though you have been in trouble often before in connection with drugs. Balancing all these factors, but focusing particularly on the fact that the amount of heroin was tiny, I propose to take a consecutive sentence of 9 months’ imprisonment as my starting point.
You, too, are entitled to have your sentences reduced by one-third to reflect your pleas of guilty on the return date when you were committed to the High Court for sentence, as well as the fact that you gave the police information which enabled them to identify Ken Wong. Accordingly, the sentences which I pass on you are as follows: 2 years’ imprisonment for the offence of burglary, and 6 months’ imprisonment to be served consecutively for the offence of possession of heroin. That makes 2½ years’ imprisonment in all.