SINGAPORE, Oct 20 — A 30-year-old man, who was found guilty of molesting his younger colleague three times in a single evening in 2018, was sentenced yesterday (October 19) to one year in jail and three strokes of the cane.
Chua Kia Dong was married when he groped and kissed the victim after they had just completed door-to-door insurance sales together at a Housing and Development Board (HDB) block.
He was convicted based on his own confession to the police after he was arrested, and evidence such as closed-circuit television footage.
He had claimed during the trial that she consented. He did not deny the physical acts, but alleged they were having an ongoing consensual affair.
His lawyer, Anand George from IRB Law, told the court that he intends to appeal against the conviction and sentence. He remains out on bail pending the appeal in the High Court.
George said that Chua resigned from his insurance job the day after he was convicted, and currently works as a delivery driver earning almost a quarter of what he used to.
He has two young children with his wife and any lengthy sentence would severely impact the family, the defence counsel added.
George had asked for six months and one week of jail with no caning, while the prosecution had sought at least 14 months’ jail and four strokes of the cane.
Chua’s victim, who is about five years his junior, cannot be named due to a court order to protect her identity.
The molestations took place in the evening of June 1, 2018.
Chua first groped and kissed the woman at the sky garden of a HDB block in Sengkang, then kissed her in a lift on the way to a basement car park. He then groped and kissed her once more in his car at the car park.
She lodged a police report shortly after confiding in her boyfriend and work superiors.
In relation to the lift incident, Chua claimed that she had been acting coy and playing hard-to-get when she said “no” to his advances.
The prosecution had earlier urged the court to accept the victim’s account that she had given in to pressure to have sex with him in February 2018.
She testified that she avoided Chua afterwards, until he promised to stop touching her a month before the incident. She then acceded to his request to go door-to-door for their work.
Even in his own testimony, Chua admitted that any sexual acts had stopped in February, the prosecution noted.
For each of the three molestation offences, he could have been jailed for up to two years, fined, caned, or receive any combination of the three. ― TODAY
