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Man jailed for molesting girl in forest
By Alvina Soh | Posted: 03 January 2012 1751 hrs
SINGAPORE: He told her that they were going to meet his friends at a secluded forested area near Mandai Road.
But it quickly turned into a nightmare for a 16-year-old girl, who had to cover herself in newspapers and seek help after she was stripped naked and molested by a 58-year-old man.
Tan Leng Hwa, who was 42-years-old at the time of the 1996 offence, was jailed four years and two months on Tuesday for one count of aggravated outrage of modesty.
Tan, who was charged for the offence in 1997, was also found guilty of a second charge of failure to attend court that year, after he left Singapore for Johor Bahru and absconded bail for 14 years.
The court heard Tan had befriended the girl, who was a secondary school student then, at a block in Marsiling Lane in 1996.
Sometime later that year, he drove her to a dark forested area off Mandai Road, under the pretext that they were going to look for his friends there.
Shortly after, the tall and tanned man asked her to be his lover. She rejected him, but this did not stop him from kissing her and caressing her breasts. Her efforts to break free from the car also failed as he restrained her and also removed her spectacles to hinder her escape.
His attempts did not let up even when she succeeded in running out of the car, as he managed to pull off her shirt in the process. He even followed her out of the car to hug her and remove her bra, before touching her breasts again. He then continued pulling off her shorts and underwear despite her struggles.
The court heard that the girl was completely naked when she eventually fought herself free.
Tan had left the place when he lost track of her.
Failing to recover her clothes, the victim covered herself with newspapers before running to the main road for help.
A taxi driver passing by spotted her. He gave the girl his shirt to cover herself up, before driving her to a police post.
A medical report revealed that she suffered multiple abrasions on her breasts, buttocks and limbs.
The court heard that Tan surrendered himself to the police a few weeks later.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Davyd Chong who described the offence as "highly intrusive", called for a jail term of more than three years.
Mr Chong said that the girl, who is now 31-years-old, "had to suffer the indignity and humiliation" of having to publicly seek help while clothed in newspapers.
He added that the "trauma, anguish and psychological impact the attack had on the girl, will certainly leave her scarred for the rest of her life."
He also told the court that Tan has a propensity of violence and has a string of previous offences, dating as far back as 1975. These included theft, possession of a gun without a license, and armed robbery, which saw Tan receiving an eight year jail term and 20 strokes of the cane, then.
-CNA/ac
