A 29-YEAR-OLD man who repeatedly raped his live-in fiancee's daughter was finally caught out after he used his camera-phone to take video of himself molesting the girl.

On Friday, the man, a vegetable packer who has previous convictions for sexual offences, was put behind bars for 26 years and ordered to be caned the maximum 24 strokes.

He cannot be named to protect the identity of the girl, now aged 11 and a primary six pupil.

The High Court heard that the man met the girl's mother in 2004 when she was going through a divorce from her second husband.

Later that year, they got engaged and he moved in with her and her two children.

The girl was first raped in the first half of 2006, when she was nine.

She was sleeping in her room, running a fever, when he woke her and raped her.

She was too frightened to tell anyone about the assault.

Subsequently, he raped her four more times, between May 2006 and July 2007.

One late night in August last year, the man sneaked into the girl's room while birthday celebrations for his fiancee were going on in the corridor outside.

He used his mobile phone to film him molesting the sleeping girl.

His act was interrupted when the girl's mother walked in and asked what he was doing.

He quickly moved away from the girl and replied that he was cooling himself using the fan in the room.

The mother did not suspect anything amiss at the time, and the party continued.

But a day later, while he was asleep, the girl's mother checked his mobile phone and found the video clip.

She confronted him and made a police report. He was arrested the next day.

The man pleaded guilty to two charges of rape and one charge of outrage of modesty on Friday. Three other rape charges were taken into consideration.

The man, who did not have a lawyer, pleaded for leniency, promising to turn over a new leaf.

But Deputy Public Prosecutor Francis Ng argued that the accused had evidently not learnt his lesson after doing time for his previous offences.

His 'final perverse act' showed that he had treated the girl as a 'mere sexual plaything', said the DPP.

The court heard that the girl was so traumatised, she was unable to give a victim impact statement.

In passing sentence, Justice Kan Ting Chiu took into account that the man had abused his position of authority as a father figure and preyed on a young and defenceless girl.