Rapes And Kills His Girlfriend's 20-month-old Daughter

JAKARTA - A man has been sentenced to 30 years in prison and other additional sentences, after the rape and murder of a 20-month-old baby girl shocked him earlier this year.

The Daejeon District Court, South Korea, sentenced a 29-year-old man, identified only as Yang, for raping and killing the baby girl of his girlfriend who lived with him last June.

Yang was charged with abusing and killing the baby girl, because she didn't stop crying on the night of June 15. He viciously, who covered the innocent baby with a blanket, punched and stepped on him for about an hour while drunk at his home in Daejeon, about 165 kilometers south of Seoul. He was also charged with raping the toddler before beating him to death.

Yang and his girlfriend, surnamed Jeong, later allegedly hid the victim's body in an ice box in their bathroom.

Prosecutors demanded the death penalty and chemical castration treatment for Yang in a previous court hearing on December 1. However, the court rejected the prosecutor's request regarding the chemical castration treatment for Yang and the disclosure of his identity.

Instead, the suspect was barred from working in a child-related facility for 10 years and ordered to wear a tracking device for 20 years and undergo a 200-hour child abuse treatment program.

"Yang's actions of sexually assaulting and indiscriminately beating the victim who was raised by himself to death, are so horrific that they cannot be expressed in words," the court quoted The Korea Times as saying December 22.

"Given similar crimes in different parts of society, he must be held to a heavy weight," the court ruled, adding his sentence was to be determined in consideration of his deep repentance and other circumstances.

Meanwhile, the court also sentenced Jeong to one and a half years in prison on charges of helping Yang hide the victim's body. That said, Jeong may not have had the ability to prevent murder due to Yang's constant beatings.

To note, child abuse awareness activists and residents who attended the trial complained that the sentence was too weak, with some of them crying during the trial.