Student care volunteer who molested 10-year-old boy in church toilet gets probation

SINGAPORE: A student care volunteer who molested a 10-year-old boy in a church toilet was given 18 months' probation on Monday (May 13).

The 20-year-old offender also has to perform 130 hours of community service and undergo psychological treatment for his sexual offending behaviour.

Both the offender and the church cannot be named in order to protect the identity of the victim.

The volunteer pleaded guilty in March to one charge under the Children and Young Persons Act, with another charge of taking a nude photo of another boy taken into consideration.

The court heard that the man began volunteering at a student care centre at a church from November 2016, helping the children in Primary 1 to 4 study and playing board games with them.

He got to know the 10-year-old boy in January 2017 while volunteering at the centre and began chatting with him on Instagram.

The boy regarded the volunteer as his sibling and called him "korkor" or elder brother.

The volunteer admitted that he developed a "curiosity about young boys" sometime in 2018.

In July last year, he asked the 10-year-old boy to follow him to a toilet at the centre where they entered a cubicle together.

The volunteer then molested the boy and masturbated. The boy made an excuse to leave and told his mother later about what had happened.

His mother informed a director at the student care centre about the offence, and the director made a police report after conducting an internal investigation.

District Judge May Mesenas also ordered the volunteer's parents to put up a bond of S$5,000 to ensure their son's good behaviour during probation.

For sexual exploitation of a child, the man could have been jailed for up to five years, fined up to S$10,000, or both.