Rape-then-marry convict loses appeal in High Court

KOTA KINABALU -  A 41-year-old convicted for rape and who later married his under-aged victim, will serve out his 12 year jail sentence following the dismissal of his appeal here today.

The Sabahan restaurant manager had sought to overturn his child rape conviction on grounds that the DNA samples linking him to the crime was obtained unlawfully.

High Court judge Stephen Chung rejected the appeal saying there was nothing to disturb the findings of the Sessions Court judge’s judgement in February last year and dismissed the appeal.

The case had drawn worldwide attention when the accused took the child he raped as his second wife in May last year, with the consent of his first wife and mother of his four children aged between three and 18.

The appeal was based on two issues — that the Sessions court judge had failed to determine that the two child witnesses in the case were intelligent and mature enough to understand the judicial proceedings and that forensic evidence, among them sperm samples swabbed from a handkerchief taken from Riduan’s car, failed to comply with the DNA Identification Act 2009 and Regulations 2012.

Chung in his judgement also rejected an application for a stay of execution pending an appeal to to Court of Appeal, sending Riduan, who was released on bail pending this appeal, to jail to begin serving his sentence.

Riduan was convicted of raping a primary six student, who he met through social media platform Facebook in a car parked by the side of a road near the Kionsom waterfall in Inanam on February 18, 2013.

He garnered attention for taking the girl as his second wife in May 2013 and in June 2014 was also convicted of bribing the girl’s father with RM10,000 to withdraw the rape report.

Sessions Court judge Ummu Kalthom Abdul Samad found him guilty of statutory rape in February this year and sentenced him to serve 12 years and whipping.