COURT: No one, having heard the complainant in this case, can be under any doubt at all that you put her through a most terrifying experience. You were plainly extremely angry that she wanted to remain close to her real boyfriend who lived in Australia and you were aware that your relationship with the complainant was coming to an end.
What you decided to do, regardless of her feelings and out of a sense of revenge, was to spoil for all time her relationship with her friend in Australia. This was a greatly aggravating circumstance. You were well aware that she regarded you as a secret lover but not as her true boyfriend and you decided that if you could no longer have her, then you would make very sure that her boyfriend in Australia could not also.
You had tried this before; that was after the incident which was called the ‘tea incident’, when you took her phone in late October, just two months earlier. As a result of that, she had had to go on a special visit to Australia to try and smooth things over with her boyfriend.
Now, on 29 December, you tried to finish things off once and for all. In the middle of the night, Hong Kong time, you sent him messages and also picture files, informing the boyfriend in Australia that you were at home with his girlfriend and even inviting him to call up on the phone, which he did later. That was when you put the phone on loudspeaker and made her talk to him.
One of your messages is particularly revealing. At 12.47 you said, in effect, that this may be the last time that she was going to be at your place and I am perfectly satisfied you knew exactly what you had in mind for her and nothing was going to stand in your way. You had driven her already, in an extremely dangerous fashion, all the way back to your home, ignoring her desire to go to her own home.
At 28 minutes past midnight, she tried to make a phone call from your car, when you got to your home, to get a taxi to go home but you snatched the phone from her. You then dragged her inside your home and made her go to your room, which she did not want to do. It is no wonder that she wanted her phone back, having regard to what you did to her the last time you took her phone and she was so frightened and disturbed by what you were doing that she even went into your parents’ room and woke them up, if they were not already asleep(awake?).
They tried to give help but, of course, they were no match for you. You completely ignored their advice and instead, in another gravely aggravating circumstance, you went and got a chopper out of the kitchen and what you intended to do, you succeeded in doing, which was to frighten her back into your room because she was afraid if she did not go, there would be bloodshed.
In fact, you are a very dangerous bully with a very bad temper. You had been a fitness enthusiast, used to exercising with weights in the gym and you were much stronger than the complainant and utterly determined to have sex with her one last time, regardless of her obvious objection to what you were doing.
Even after you raped her, you effectively kept her prisoner in your home and that was until such time as she heard your mother in the house, possibly your father leaving, and when you were apparently asleep. Without her shoes or her mobile or her handbag or those sort of things which she had left in your room, she slipped out and told your mother what had happened, and at about 10 o'clock in the morning, your sister was good enough to give her a lift back to her home. Put shortly, this had been a night of terror for the complainant.
You already have a criminal record, now at the age of 25. A sentence was imposed in February 2011 of 34 months for trafficking in dangerous drugs. Quite soon after your release from that sentence, you were put on a bind-over order for beating up some lady. I notice from the order made by the court that you were to keep the peace and abstain from committing any criminal act involving the use of violence or the threat of violence against any person. You should take on people your own size. Almost exactly, one day different, a year later, you raped this complainant.
There is no real mitigation in this case. It is your right to have contested the case but in doing so, you have made the complainant relive her ordeal all over again. The point about that is that you have shown not the slightest remorse for what you have done. How she will ever recover from the obvious trauma that you put her through and to her life in general is difficult to say.
You will have been advised about the sentence for rape in Hong Kong. Your sentence is one of 8 years’ imprisonment.