Man, 20, pleads guilty to having sex with minors at staircases after texting them on social media

SINGAPORE: A man met two underage girls on social media and separately had sex with them at staircases, giving one a pregnancy scare and the other bites on her neck which her teacher reported to her parents.

The accused, who cannot be named due to gag orders imposed by the court, pleaded guilty on Wednesday (Jun 9) to three counts of sexual penetration of a minor, with another nine charges taken into consideration for sentencing.

These charges include intentionally producing child abuse material by filming sex acts, circulating obscene material to a young person and possessing 1,000 obscene films.

The court heard that the accused was 19 when he met a 14-year-old student on Instagram in 2019.

They met up on Nov 17, 2019, at a void deck in Sumang Lane and began kissing each other. They then went to the staircase on the 17th floor where the victim said she wanted to bear the accused's child, said Deputy Public Prosecutor Samyata Ravindran.

They engaged in sexual intercourse there. A few weeks later, the victim told her mother that she might be pregnant as her period was delayed and she had engaged in unprotected sex.

The victim's mother panicked and took her to a polyclinic, where she was assessed to be not pregnant. Staff members told mother and daughter that the polyclinic had to lodge a police report and did so.

The accused was hauled up for investigations, but continued to reoffend.

THE SECOND VICTIM

In March last year, when he was 20, he met a 13-year-old student on Tellonym, a mobile application. They began communicating via Instagram and the girl told him that she wanted to be his girlfriend.

The accused began sending the girl messages of a sexual nature, including asking to see her body, and explicitly describing his body parts. 

In response, the victim sent the accused videos of herself.

They met at an HDB block in the Redhill area on Mar 9 last year where they engaged in sex acts at the staircase before taking a private hire car to the accused's house. They had unprotected sex at his house.

Two days later, the girl's teacher noticed love bites on her neck and told her parents. The girl told the accused that their sexual encounters had been discovered, and he told her to lie to her parents and teachers that they would not have sex anymore.

The girl's parents took her to lodge a police report on the same day and the accused was arrested. He was charged in court two days later and remanded for psychiatric assessment before being released in April last year.

His phone was seized and 1,000 obscene videos and 114 videos without valid certificates were found. 

Court documents stated that: "The second victim’s phone was also seized and it was noted that the accused had sent the second victim an image of a penis (not his) via WhatsApp."

Despite being charged and briefly remanded, the accused met the victim again on Jun 19 last year at her home. 

The girl was with a friend but left to go to a staircase with the accused where they had sex again. While they were engaging in intercourse, the accused recorded their acts without the victim's knowledge.

After this, he "quickly abandoned" the victim "as she was unimportant to him" and spoke to the victim's friend, said the prosecutor.

He later went home and deleted the video he had taken.

On Jun 24 last year, the victim told her counsellor that she had engaged in sex acts with the accused. He was arrested for a second time and charged in court on Jun 26 last year. His bail was revoked and he has been remanded since.

When his new phone was seized, 70 obscene videos were discovered on it.

The judge called for reports assessing his suitability for probation and reformative training and adjourned sentencing to later this month.