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Instructor repeatedly molested primary school girl while 'treating' her injury
Wan Ting Koh
·Senior Reporter
Tue, 8 March 2022, 11:34 am·4-min read
A girl crouched on the floor. (PHOTO: Getty Images)
SINGAPORE — An instructor who trained a troupe of students at a warehouse would lead one of the girls into another room to molest her over the course of several months.
The 58-year-old man would apply medicated oil to the student’s private parts, under the pretext of helping her with pain from an injury.
He repeated the same excuse several more times in 2019. Emboldened by the fact that the girl, then aged nine to 10, kept mum, the instructor even arranged a mattress on the floor of a room to sexually assault her.
The married man was jailed for five years and three months on Tuesday (8 March) after earlier pleading guilty to three counts of aggravated molest, having thrown in the towel midway during his trial.
The sentence passed includes a three-month jail term in lieu of caning. The man cannot be caned as he is above 50.
The names of the victim, accused and the group activity have been redacted from court documents.
Students called him 'master'
The man was the main instructor for a troupe of students who practised in a warehouse. The pupils ranged from kindergarten and primary school students to those in Secondary 1 and older. The pupils called him “master”, which reflected his authority over them.The girl began attending the sessions in November 2018 with two younger siblings. At times, when the siblings’ father was busy, the instructor would fetch the trio from their home to the warehouse before sending them home.
In March 2019, the trio were attending class when a fellow student accidentally kicked the girl, then nine, in her groin. The instructor led her to the kitchen and told her to remove her pants and underwear. He retrieved a bottle of medicated oil and pretended to help her with the pain by applying the oil to her groin. He molested the girl for about five minutes.
He then asked the victim to return to training but to keep silent about the incident.
Molested victim repeatedly
Some one to two weeks later, the victim and her siblings attended another training session. The victim did not feel anymore pain at this point.Said the prosecution, “The accused wanted to again use the victim to satisfy his lust, and, as he had not received any complaints by the victim’s parents about the first incident, felt that he could again molest her without the matter being detected.”
He brought the girl to a storeroom on the second floor of the warehouse and laid out a mattress, before repeating his previous act. He repeated his instruction not to tell anyone before releasing her to training.
Between April and September 2019, he repeated the routine of asking the victim to follow him to the second floor storeroom before molesting her.
On one occasion, after the man had molested the girl, she observed that the man adjusted his pants. Thinking that he was removing his pants, she began to cry. The instructor stopped and told her that his back was hurting. He told her to return to training.
The girl kept her silence and took a break from training due to her exams.
Instructor wanted to bring victim overseas for competition
On 26 October 2019, the instructor called the victim’s father to inform him to bring the victim and her siblings for training the next day. The victim, who was holding onto her father’s phone at the time, saw the instructor's incoming call and declined it. She then deleted the contact from her father’s phone.However, the instructor managed to contact the victim’s father later that day. He told her father that he intended to bring the victim and her siblings overseas for a competition in Malaysia in November.
The victim’s father agreed to the competition and told them to attend training on 27 October. The victim begged her father to let her skip training, but relented when her siblings expressed their enthusiasm for the competition.
Still afraid, the girl approached her mother later that night and confided in her. The mother informed her husband, and both parents brought the girl to lodge a police report.
The instructor was arrested on 27 October.
The victim reported feeling fearful and angry since the abuse and being scared of older men.
The man’s lawyer Kalaithasan Karuppaya, said that his client had been training students for over a decade but has since become a dishwasher. He also has a good relationship with his wife of about ten years, added the lawyer.
Submitting a testimonial from one of the instructor’s students, Karuppaya said that the accused would often go beyond the call of duty as a teacher, stocking up on drinks and biscuits for his students to snack on should they be hungry before or after training
