SINGAPORE, Aug 12 — He was curious about what sex with an underage girl would feel like, even though he knew it was illegal.
This was a 26-year-old man’s admission to the authorities, after he was arrested for raping a 12-year-old girl not once, but twice.
They met on dating application BeeTalk in 2017, when he was 23.
He also pestered her for nude photos and sent her sexually explicit messages.
Separately, he posted two of his ex-girlfriends’ nude images on social network Tumblr. He did this to one of the women after she refused to divorce her husband in order to be with him.
Yesterday, a High Court judge sentenced the Singaporean to 10 years and 10 weeks’ jail, and six strokes of the cane. The man cannot be named to protect his victims’ identities.
He pleaded guilty to one statutory rape charge and two counts of transmitting obscene material. One charge each of statutory rape and sexual exploitation of a child were taken into consideration for sentencing.
Messages of a sexual nature
In September 2017, he got to know the 12-year-old girl on BeeTalk. They told each other their ages and began chatting on WhatsApp.
Deputy Public Prosecutors Wong Kok Weng, Grace Teo and Tay Jia En said he immediately initiated messages of a sexual nature.
That night, he asked if he could perform sex acts on her and suggested having a video call in which they exposed each other’s private parts.
He also asked to meet in person.
Initially uncomfortable with his messages, she finally said she was willing to have sex with him because of his persistence.
The next day, he took her to a stairway at Leng Kee Community Club in Lengkok Bahru. He frequented it and knew that few people went to the third floor.
She agreed to have sex with him because she thought he was a nice person who listened to her troubles. It was her first sexual encounter.
After that, he asked for her nude photos. She eventually sent him one without her face exposed, before refusing to send him others.
Four days after the first rape, they had sex again at her home when she skipped school.
Her mother confiscated her mobile phone that evening and discovered the sexually explicit messages.
They filed a police report after speaking to the girl’s school principal and vice-principal.
Exposed ex-girlfriends’ photos on Tumblr
The court also heard yesterday that a decade ago, the man broke up with his girlfriend, but the pair remained friends.
In 2015, she was undergoing separation from her husband and contacted him as she felt down.
They had sex once and she sent him naked photos of herself. They also video-called each other while she was in the shower.
“The accused repeatedly asked her to divorce her husband to be with him, but she refused and subsequently ceased communications with him,” said the prosecution.
She then discovered that two nude photos of herself had been posted to Tumblr and suspected he was behind the act.
He deleted them the next day, but they continued circulating.
He also met another woman on BeeTalk in 2015 and they started dating. She sent him nude photos before they broke up two years later.
Even though she told him to delete the photos, she found them circulating on Tumblr after their break-up.
He initially denied posting them before admitting to doing so while they were still together.
In passing sentence, Justice Kannan Ramesh found that his offences against the first ex-girlfriend was tantamount to revenge pornography.— TODAY
