Hong Kong court jails man for 7 years for raping 13-year-old girl during break-in 4 decades ago

He also noted the woman, who died aged 29, had lived her life without being able to develop a romantic relationship or take up full-time jobs.

“The defendant deprived a young girl of the opportunity to live a normal life, which the court must denounce in the strongest terms,” Chan said in sentencing.

A second count of robbery, in which Wong was accused of stealing HK$160 (US$21) from the young victim, was left on file following a plea bargain.

Senior Inspector Darren Yeung Man-tik, who was in charge of Wong’s prosecution, said the force discovered the suspect after tracking him down to an area in Tsuen Wan based on his last known address.

“This is a heartbreaking case which has brought immeasurable pain to the victim, her family and society,” Yeung said, adding Tuesday’s ruling should give some closure to those affected by the decades-old crime.

Wong was described in court as an opportunist burglar who looked for random targets when visiting housing estates in his job as an aluminium window maintenance worker in the 1980s.

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After completing a job at Tuen Mun’s San Fat Estate on January 20, 1983, Wong combed the building and spotted the 13-year-old girl returning to a flat occupied by her elder sister shortly after 11.30am.

He pushed the girl into the empty flat and threatened to stab her with a knife if she made noise. He gagged the victim, tied her up and raped her on a bed.

A policewoman recalled seeing the girl “in an apparent highly distressed condition” when the victim reported the crime at a nearby police post, her hair tousled and eyes welled up.

The ensuing investigation made little progress, the court heard, with the only clues being some bloodstained tissues containing the culprit’s semen and a palmprint lifted from a chest of drawers.

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A breakthrough came in 2008 when investigators were able to identify the palmprint as Wong’s thanks to the digitisation of the force’s fingerprint matching system.

Wong, who had remained in Hong Kong since last returning from mainland China in 2008, was arrested in August 2021 after the routine identity check revealed he was a wanted suspect.

The defendant initially faced charges of rape and robbery, with prosecutors dropping the former count at one point of the proceedings. They later decided to reinstate the rape charge after considering the overall evidence, including the girl’s statement taken at the time.

Defence counsel Joseph Lee on Tuesday said his client had turned a page since he was last released from prison in 2002 on unrelated charges.

Letters submitted to the court said Wong had become “quite a different person” and a “much-changed man”.

Senior assistant director of public prosecutions Derek Lai Kim-wah called for a stiff sentence and highlighted the defendant’s threat to use violence, serious mental impact on the victim and invasion of a private premises.

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“This rape killed the girl,” Lai said.

But Recorder Chan said it was hard to attribute the victim’s suicide to the rape in the absence of supporting evidence.

The court knocked off three years from a starting point of 10 years’ imprisonment to reflect Wong’s guilty plea and the “reform” he had undergone.

Both rape and robbery are punishable by up to life in prison in Hong Kong.