SINGAPORE, Sept 7 — In his early teenage years, a boy with an IQ of 57 broke the law multiple times such as by making his friend’s underage sister perform sex acts on him.

He was eventually remanded in prison for breaching his bail conditions by cutting the electronic tag on his ankle and failing to turn up for pre-trial conferences in court.

Today, the teenager, now aged 16, pleaded guilty to six charges including molestation of a minor, sexual penetration of a minor and theft. Two of these offences were reduced from more serious ones of sexual assault and statutory rape.

The Singaporean, who attends a school for special needs students and has an intellectual disability, cannot be named as the Children and Young Persons Act bans the publication of identities of offenders aged under 18.

A district judge called for a report to assess his suitability for reformative training — a regimented rehabilitation programme for offenders under 21 who commit relatively serious crimes. He will return on September 28 to be sentenced.

Almost a dozen other similar charges will be taken into consideration for sentencing then.

Played hide and seek

The court heard that in 2018, the boy’s friend approached their 14-year-old schoolmate and kissed her on the cheek and lips without her consent.

The two boys, then aged 12, proceeded to follow her when she ran away. They held her by her hands against a wall underneath a staircase, kissing and groping her chest.

They stopped and walked away after a few seconds when a teacher approached them.

The accused was questioned by the police, who issued him with a two-year conditional warning. He was also placed under a guidance programme for positive-adolescent sexuality treatment.

For molesting the victim, the other boy was sentenced in the Youth Court in 2020 to two years’ probation.

Then in 2019, the accused molested a nine-year-old girl after befriending her brother. They lived in the same neighbourhood.

While they played a game of hide and seek, the accused and the girl ran up a staircase to hide. He then stroked her buttocks and rubbed his groin on her, prompting her to turn around and ask what he was doing.

When he told her to continue looking for the seekers, she walked away instead and squatted next to a wall at the staircase landing.

The boy then went over and made her perform a sex act on him. When their friends approached, he told her not to tell anyone what had just happened.

He later told the police that he had decided to have sex with the girl after witnessing his friend have sex with another girl at a car park.

A week after this incident, the girl was heading home with her brother when they met the offender. He asked the girl to follow him and she agreed, thinking that he wanted to apologise to her.

Instead, while they were alone at a 16th-floor staircase landing, he sexually penetrated her until he heard a door opening somewhere.

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Chong Kee En told the court that the boy did not ask the girl for her permission to have sex, and she did not consent either.

When interviewed by the police, the boy said that when he first saw her that day, he felt bored and wanted to have sex with her.

The girl confided in her mother only in August last year.

Separately in 2019, the boy set fire to two bicycles near his friend’s flat.

In 2020, while he was still undergoing the guidance programme on sexuality education, he also stole his grandmother’s wallet and spent most of the S$250 (RM799) cash that she had in it.

Probation inappropriate

Today, both DPP Chong and the boy’s lawyer, Pramnath Vijayakumar from the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme, agreed that probation was inappropriate due to the severity of the boy’s offences.

Vijayakumar noted that his client was extremely young at the time of his first offence. He also has an intellectual disability and has been remanded for more than three months because his mother was not willing to bail him out.

The remand period gave him the chance to reflect on his actions and gain better insight into his conduct, the lawyer added. However, he had to be segregated from older inmates when he got into an altercation with a cellmate.

Adult offenders convicted of sexual penetration of a minor under 14 can be jailed for up to 20 years, as well as fined or caned. — TODAY