HCCC 85/2023

[2024] HKCFI 3506

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CRIMINAL CASE NO 85 OF 2023

________________________

________________________

_________________________________

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

_________________________________

COURT: The accused was convicted of the offence of rape by the unanimous verdict of the jury on 31 July this year.

In respect of the facts of this case, the victim was a 13-year-old student at the material time while the accused was 21 years old. They came to know each other through Instagram.

On the day of the offence, that is 25 August 2021, the accused arranged to meet X and her girlfriend Y in Tsim Sha Tsui. Then he invited X to go to his home in Yau Ma Tei for a chat. X went up to his home alone. While she was staying there, the accused asked her to drink some alcoholic drink, that is some beer that he bought earlier, and also to take some puffs of herbal cannabis. Then he started kissing her ear and her neck and pushed her to the corner of the bed, sucking her breasts despite her protest. Then he attempted to remove her pants. Being scared, X, the victim, offered to conduct or perform oral sex for him so that she could avoid to have sexual intercourse. But still, after she performed the oral sex, that did not stop him and he started to touch and rub her vagina. Eventually despite her struggle and protest, he raped her against her will until her private part was bleeding.

No condom was being used during the course of the rape and the victim cannot tell whether he ejaculated or not during the course of the intercourse.

The accused is now 23 years old. He is a Pakistani male who came to Hong Kong in March 2015. He has received secondary school education in Pakistan, and that before his arrest he worked as a hairstylist earning around 15,000 income per month. After his arrest, I was informed by defence counsel Mr David Boyton that he worked in the airport. He was married and at the time of the offence, he was living together with his wife.

Despite that he did not come to Hong Kong until March 2015, he had four criminal convictions for the offence of indecent assaults. On the 11th day of July 2017, he was convicted of four counts of indecent assaults despite he was only at the age of 16 at the material time. He was sentenced to probation order for a total of 12 months for those four convictions.

I was informed by counsel that all those convictions of indecent assault related to touching of ladies’ bottom or other intimate part of the ladies in public place. Those offences were obviously committed within two years upon his arrival in Hong Kong.

I have adjourned sentence to wait for a victim impact report. According to the psychological report prepared by Ms Janet Tso, the clinical psychologist, the victim had wanted to forgive the accused based on the principle of her belief in the Islamic religion so that she could let go of the incident. The test profile did not indicate that X had significant problematic behaviours or negative emotions in the past