SOURCE: The Straits Times

AN INDIAN national tried to chat up a domestic worker in Jalan Membina, in the Tiong Bahru area, in February this year.

When the 28-year-old Filipino maid, who was returning home from a nearby shop at 2pm on Feb27, ignored him and entered a lift, Adaikalam Suresh followed her. The 24-year-old labourer asked her for her cellphone number but she continued to ignore him.

Then things turned ugly. As she was about to walk out of the lift on the 21st floor, he reached out and grabbed her breast. She screamed for help. The man took to his heels but dropped his dormitory card in his haste to escape.

Suresh was arrested within days and, yesterday, he was jailed for five months by a district court after pleading guilty to outraging the modesty of the maid, who cannot be named.

The maximum sentence for outraging a woman’s modesty is a two-year jail term and caning or a fine.

SOURCE: The Straits Times

A SALESMAN was convicted yesterday of sexually abusing his eight-year-old stepdaughter.

The 30-year-old had claimed in court that the girl was prone to telling lies. But District Judge Toh Yung Cheong said he found her to be an “unusually convincing” witness because of the consistency of her evidence and her demeanour on the witness stand.

The judge also pointed out that the credibility of the stepfather had been undermined because of “material inconsistencies” between his statements to the police and the testimony he delivered in court. Judge Toh did not elaborate.

The stepfather will be sentenced on Friday and faces a jail term of up to 10 years and a fine of up to $10,000 on each of the three charges he was convicted of.

Sixteen similar charges have been stood down.

Defence counsel Goh Aik Chew said that he had been instructed to appeal against the conviction.

During the 10-day trial that started in February, the court heard that the three offences were committed between Jan 27 and Oct 2, 2009. One occurred in the bathroom while two took place in the bedroom of the one-room flat.

The girl, who was then living with her two-year-old brother, her sales assistant mother, stepfather and grandmother, cannot be named to protect her identity.

She was the main witness for the prosecution but testified in-camera, which meant that the courtroom was cleared of the public and the media.

However, the testimony of her mother, grandmother, school counsellor and social workers shed light on how the offences were discovered.

The girl told her grandmother about the abuse on Sept 27, 2009.

Three days later, the grandmother told the girl’s mother.

The mother wanted to be sure before going to the authorities, but the girl confided in her school counsellor on Oct 2 the same year.

The counsellor told the court that she was shocked to hear the primary school pupil describe how her stepfather forced her to perform sex acts and got on top of her.

Officers from the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports were notified and a senior child protection officer testified that the girl also accused her stepfather of forcing her to watch “Japanese girls movies” with scenes of skimpily dressed actresses.

This forms one of the 16 remaining charges.

Although worried that her mother and grandmother would be upset, the girl told the officer that “she could not take it any more and she just wanted the bad things to stop”.

The officer said that the girl had said: “It is the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

The girl is now being cared for in a children’s home.

The stepfather is out on $10,000 bail.

SOURCE: The Straits Times

A POLYTECHNIC student became the 12th man to be dealt with for having sex with a minor.

Jesper Lim Jun Hao, 20, who pleaded guilty, was 16 when he had sex with the 12-year-old girl in mid-2007. They became acquainted in June 2006 through a social networking website, but they did not interact with each other much then.

A year later, they resumed their acquaintance online and started chatting. During a chat, she told him she was 12. He said he was studying at the Institute of Technical Education.

After chatting for about a week, they met at Bukit Batok MRT station, proceeded to her flat and had sex. No one was at home then. After having sex on a second occasion, also in mid-2007, they lost contact.

The court heard that the girl was admitted to hospital in July 2008 and found to be pregnant. She terminated the pregnancy and analyses showed Lim was not the biological father of the foetus.

She revealed to the police that she had had sex with several men.

Of the 11 men convicted, five were jailed for between three months and 11 months, two were fined, and the rest put on probation.

Lawyer Mervyn Tan said the Nanyang Polytechnic student had always been in the top five places in school. Young and foolish, his client had experimented with his sexual urges and both he and the girl did not fully realise the implications of their actions.

Yesterday, Community Court Judge Soh Tze Bian sentenced Lim to 15 months’ supervised probation, and ordered him to do 100 hours of community service and remain indoors from 10pm to 6am.

His parents posted a bond of $5,000 to ensure his good behaviour. He could have been jailed for up to five years and fined up to $10,000.