SINGAPORE, Aug 1 — Not long after a former secondary school teacher began giving private physics lessons to his 15-year-old student, he started inviting her to his home outside of tuition.
They began a romantic relationship in 2015, which soon evolved into a physically intimate one. They had sex on 10 separate occasions over a span of one-and-a-half months, though she did not consider them “real full sex,” and thought she was still a virgin.
But that changed in November 2016. A month had passed after their breakup when she discovered she was pregnant with his child. She then lodged a police report against him about a month later.
Yesterday, the 41-year-old teacher was found guilty in the State Courts of 19 charges of sexual penetration of a minor under 16 years old. He has not been teaching since January 2017.
Neither he nor the girl, who is now a 19-year-old polytechnic student, can be named due to a court gag order to protect her identity.
Their child is now two years old.
In giving his verdict, District Judge Chay Yuen Fatt said he found the girl’s testimony consistent and supported by the WhatsApp text messages she had exchanged with the teacher.
Sentencing was adjourned to August 29. Each charge carries a maximum punishment of 10 years’ jail and a fine.
Denied having sex before she was 16
During the trial, the teacher denied engaging in any penetrative sexual activity with the girl before she turned 16 years old.
He gave three reasons for that: It was illegal to do so, she was unwilling to have premarital sex due to her religious and moral values, and they both feared the risk of pregnancy.
He claimed that he started having sex with her only in December 2015, after she turned 16. Before that, he said they restricted themselves to kissing and touching each other, and rubbing their private parts with only their underwear on.
Prosecutors argued that his defence was inconsistent with their text messages, and that he was in fact aware that they were doing something illegal.
“Moreover, the accused’s conscious decision to confess his feelings to the victim and enter into a romantic relationship with her was in breach of the Code of Professional Conduct for Educators and put his job at serious risk, which he acknowledged,” Deputy Public Prosecutors James Chew and Amanda Han noted.
The relationship
He had taught the girl from 2012 to 2015 in their secondary school, located in the north-east region in Singapore. He was her science teacher in Secondary 1 and 2, and her physics teacher in Sec 3 and 4.
In December 2013, when the girl was about to move on to Sec 3, he offered to give her private physics lessons. She agreed and he began giving her weekly lessons — usually on Saturday mornings at his home with another student.
This went on until she finished her O-Level examinations in November 2015. In June that year, during the school holidays, he began inviting her to his home outside of tuition lessons. He played her some songs that he had composed himself.
The next month, he confessed that he liked her. After giving her some time to think about it, they got into a relationship. When she was at his home, they made sure his mother was not home and his neighbours did not see her leaving or entering the house.
Eventually, on August 10, 2015, he had sex with her for the first time. This was the first time she ever had sexual intercourse.
From then till her 16th birthday at the end of October 2015, they would frequently have sex in his home.
She testified that she did not consider it to be proper sex, as to her, proper sex involved full penetration and would be very painful. However, she felt only slight pain and thought she was still a virgin.
He also told her that what they were doing was not considered sex.
They continued dating until around September 2016, when she ended the relationship while in her first year of polytechnic studies. She discovered she was 16 weeks’ pregnant the following month, and told him about it through a text message.
Along with her family members, she reported him to the police on December 7, 2016. She testified in court that she was very scared he would get into trouble when she made the report.
The teacher remains out on bail of S$25,000 (RM75,185). — TODAY
