Father Gets Suspended Jail for Blocking Daughter’s Report
HK01 · 2 SOURCESabout 2 hours ago2 MIN
Summary
A 48-year-old father was sentenced in the High Court on Thursday after admitting one count of doing acts tending and intended to pervert the course of public justice by asking his daughter not to report alleged sexual assaults by her two brothers. Judge Lily Li So-lan said the circumstances were exceptional and imposed 12 months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years, accepting that he acted in confusion and out of a wish to keep the family from collapsing.
Key Points
- The defendant, identified as L.W.D., a concrete pump operator aged 48, admitted that on 6 May 2020 he asked daughter X not to report alleged assaults by brothers L.H.C.J. and L.H.C.N. to police.
- According to the agreed facts, X, then 14, told a social worker on 6 May 2020 that both brothers had sexually assaulted her during her primary-school years, after which she was sent to stay with her grandmother in Ma On Shan.
- The father later visited X with his wife, asked her to give the brothers another chance, said he did not want to lose three children in one night, and apologised as both cried and embraced.
- X called the social worker the next day to retract the allegation, saying she had fabricated it out of hostility, but in November 2021 she told another social worker she had been abused and the matter was eventually reported to police.
- Judge Li said the father made no threats, applied no sustained pressure, and was not acting for self-preservation; she also noted his interview admissions, later guilty plea, and old criminal record dating back about 30 years.
Why It Matters
The ruling shows the court treated interference with a potential sexual-abuse complaint as serious, while still distinguishing between calculated obstruction and conduct arising from a family crisis. It also closes one strand of a case in which both sons were separately released after the court found the prosecution could not overcome legal limits tied to their ages at the time of the alleged offences.