SINGAPORE, Oct 2 — Using the pretext of keeping tabs on his teenage son, a man sought out the contact of his son’s male best friend, who was 13, so that he could check on his child’s progress at school.
But as time progressed, the messages to his son’s schoolmate became lewder and more inappropriate as he began to ask for sex as well as nude photographs, even though the victim persistently refused to accede to his various requests.
Today, the man, who is now 58, was sentenced to 10 months’ jail after pleading guilty to two counts of attempting the commission of an obscene act by a child.
He was acquitted from a third charge of outrage of modesty.
The man was not named in court documents, and the court has issued a gag order to prevent any information leading to the identification of the victim from being published.
What happened
The court heard that the man, who was once a parent volunteer in the school, came to know the victim sometime in February 2018.
“The accused always had an interest in the victim and was friendly with the victim. He spoke to the victim often and later asked the victim for his phone number,” said Deputy Public Prosecutor Phoebe Tan.
After asking the victim for his phone number, the man began contacting the victim about his son’s progress in school.
The chats became sexual over time, and the man started to ask the victim if the teen has ever had sex before, court documents stated.
“(The accused) told the victim that he had previously had sex with a male and it felt ‘fun’ doing so,” said DPP Tan.
The man also asked the victim to send naked photos of himself on an almost daily basis between 2018 and 2019, even though the teenage boy declined multiple times.
In that same period, the man also repeatedly asked the victim to have sex with him, and the victim also refused these requests.
However, the victim agreed to the man’s instructions to delete all the messages between them. The court heard that the man had warned the teen against telling anyone about their communications and threatened to make his life in school difficult if he did so.
Despite this, the man continued to remain in contact with the victim. On Feb 25, 2019, he asked the teenage boy to “bend over” and send a picture of his buttocks to him over the WhatsApp messaging app.
This was the message that the victim’s father chanced upon later on while looking at the teen’s phone. Using the same phone, the father replied to the man via WhatsApp to ask what he meant.
To this, the man lied saying that he had sent the message to the wrong person.
Court documents stated that he was suspicious that someone else was pretending to be the victim on WhatsApp. Because of this, the man then sent a text to the victim via short messaging service accusing the latter of betraying him.
Later on, the man sent more threats to the victim in Malay that said: “You have to remember I can call your dad and tell him about your case with the girl at school then you will be finished.” Court documents did not elaborate about what this case was about.
The man also threatened to tell the victim’s friends to stay away from him.
Despite the threats, the teenager later told his father about his communication with the man after his father quizzed him about it. They then lodged a report at a police station.
Abused victim’s trust
Seeking a jail term of 10 to 12 months, DPP Tan said the accused had abused his victim’s trust.
The threats that the accused made, even after the victim’s father uncovered his messages, was a further aggravating factor, he said.
In the man’s mitigation plea, his defence counsel Mohamed Muzammil Mohamed sought a fine instead of a jail term for his client.
He stated that the victim did not accede to his client’s sexual requests and hence his client’s case should warrant a lighter sentence than other cases when victims complied with the sexual requests of the accused.
Muzammil also noted that in 2021, while investigations were ongoing, the victim had come to the accused’s home to visit his friend, adding that this shows that the victim was “not affected” by the sexual requests.
DPP Tan argued that it was not fair for the defence to make conclusions about how the victim felt merely from his behaviour.
Addressing the accused in her remarks, District Judge Ong Luan Tze said given that the he was the parent of the victim’s close friend, “practically and naturally (the victim) would have looked upon you as a figure of authority” and as someone whom he would respect and listen to.
Not only did the man abuse this trust, but he also made threats to the victim.
The fact that the victim did not adhere to the inappropriate requests should be credited to him and not as a mitigating factor for the accused, she added.
For each count of procuring or attempting to procure an indecent or obscene act from a young person, the man can be sentenced to jail up to five years, fined not more than S$10,000, or both. — TODAY
