Suspended teacher, 48, gets 8 years’ jail for sex acts against 3 boys he tutored as a teen
A view of the Supreme Court in Singapore.
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- A suspended primary school teacher pleaded guilty to committing sex acts against three young boys when he was a teenager
- From 1993 to 1995, the man was a student volunteer at a youth-focused non-profit organisation where he met and sexually abused the three victims
- The crimes were uncovered by one victim's police report in 2019, after he read an article about victims of sexual crimes
- The teacher was sentenced to eight years' jail
SINGAPORE — After reading a news article about victims of sexual crimes, a man in his late 30s decided to make a police report about being sexually assaulted by a volunteer tutor at a childcare centre he attended as a child.
His 2019 police report, some 25 years after the assault took place, led investigating officers to identify and interview two other victims of sexual assault by the tutor.
The details emerged at a court hearing on Monday (Nov 27) when the former tutor, now a 48-year-old suspended school teacher, was sentenced to eight years' jail for the offences he committed as a teenager.
The suspended teacher pleaded guilty to one charge of sexual exploitation of a child and two charges of carnal intercourse against the order of nature.
Other similar charges were taken into consideration for sentencing.
He committed the offences from 1993 to 1995 when he was a 17- to 20-year-old student who volunteered at a non-profit organisation benefiting children and youth under 21.
He stopped volunteering in 1999 and became a primary school teacher, but he has since been suspended.
All three victims were beneficiaries of the society from which they received before-school or after-school care and were tutored by the accused as children.
The names of the accused, victims and non-profit organisation where they met each other cannot be published due to a court order to protect the victims' identities.
In response to TODAY's queries, a Ministry of Education (MOE) spokesperson said on Monday: "The individual has been interdicted since Aug 2019, and is no longer teaching in any school.
"MOE takes a serious view of staff misconduct and will take disciplinary action against those who fail to adhere to our standards of conduct and discipline, including dismissal from service."
As a student volunteer, the offender supervised the children in their studies and befriended them. The organisation also ran student care services for children from lower-income or troubled households.
The court heard that he met the first victim, who was then about nine or 10 years old, when he first started attending the organisation’s after-school programmes in 1993.
This victim received mathematics tutoring from the offender. In one private tutoring session when they were alone, he had asked the victim to remove his pants and sit on his lap.
He then would slap the victim’s private area if he answered a mathematics question incorrectly.
The offender had previously hit the first victim’s private area over his shorts at the student care centre, but the victim did not initially think that this was unusual because he thought that it was like boys engaging in horseplay.
The sexual abuse against this first victim and a second victim continued when he provided tuition at the second victim’s house sometime between 1994 and 1995.
In one instance, when the teacher was aged between 18 to 20 years old, he unzipped his jeans and exposed his private parts to the first victim before forcing the victim to engage in a sex act.
Between 1993 and 1994, the offender asked the second victim to stay back at the centre after everyone had left.
He then took this victim, who was around nine years old at the time, to the children’s playroom where he made the victim engage in a sex act.
The third victim, who started to receive childcare services from the non-profit organisation from age five in 1992, also received private tuition from the offender.
He engaged in a sex act with the third victim on three occasions, once for about 10 minutes.
'ABUSE OF TRUST'
The prosecution sought a sentence of eight to 10 years’ imprisonment, pointing to the abuse of the position of trust on the part of the offender and the lasting impact on the victims.Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Tay Jia En said: “It is clear that while the accused has moved on and become a teacher… the fact cannot be denied that the victims still carry these scars after 20 years.”
He gave the example of the third victim who now had an estranged relationship with his mother, who did not believe him after he told her of the sexual abuse he had faced.
DPP Tay added that the offender had pleaded guilty only at a “belated stage” after the prosecution’s case had been filed and that the third victim’s involvement had come to light only during the preparation of the prosecution's case in December last year.
Mr Rai Satish, who represented the man, argued that the fact the man was a teenager at the time of the offences should be a mitigating factor and that there was not a great disparity between his age and that of the three victims’ at the time.
However, Justice Dedar Singh Gill refuted the defence counsel’s claim that the offender did not abuse his position of trust and said that the man was plainly in a position of authority as a volunteer at the student centre.
DPP Tay also highlighted that the man was a “lauded student volunteer” who received praise and accolades from the non-profit organisation where he volunteered.
Yet, the man led “two parallel lives”, DPP Tay argued, given that he was both a volunteer celebrated by the organisation, parents and workers while being able to commit “heinous offences” with the trust placed in him.
In a letter he read to the court, the man began to speak in a shaky voice as he apologised to the victims, his parents and his brother. He added that had written apologies to the three victims and had passed them to his lawyer.
The man, who said that his mother had used up her life savings to act as his bailor, added that he would not perform such acts again because he did not want his parents to be ashamed of him.
For voluntarily having carnal intercourse against the order of nature, under Section 377 of the Penal Code 1985, the maximum sentence is a life imprisonment or a jail term that may extend to 10 years with an optional fine.
Those convicted of sexual exploitation of a child under the 1994 edition of the Children and Young Persons Act can be jailed for up to two years or be subject to a fine of up to S$5,000, for first-time offenders.
