Mathematics tuition teacher pleads guilty to molesting 15-year-old student
File photo of the State Courts in Singapore. (Photo: Jeremy Long)
SINGAPORE: A tuition teacher on Monday (Jun 17) admitted to molesting a 15-year-old girl who attended his mathematics classes.
The 48-year-old Indonesian, who is also a Singapore permanent resident, cannot be named due to a court order.
The court heard that the divorced man taught secondary school students in group classes that were conducted thrice a week at his home.
On multiple occasions, he asked the victim, who was in Secondary 3 at the time, to stay back after class, claiming that he wanted her to complete her homework.
He molested her at least five times after the other students had left, in offences committed between February and March last year.
On the first occasion in February last year, sometime after the class ended at 9pm, the tutor asked the victim to stay behind to do homework.
When he was alone with the teenager, he slid his hand under her clothes and molested her for about 30 seconds.
He did this again a second time that month. In March, the tutor again molested the girl in the same way, before lifting her shirt.
"After being molested by the accused, the victim felt molested, uncomfortable, shocked and speechless by the accused’s actions," said Deputy Public Prosecutor Delicia Tan.
"She kept the incidents of molest to herself because she was afraid to speak up and did not know how to react."
Two days after the March incident, the girl confided in a male friend.
The 17-year-old friend told the victim's school about it, and the school informed her mother.
The girl's mother took her to a police station to lodge a report soon after.
The tutor pleaded guilty on Monday to three charges of using criminal force with intent to outrage her modesty, with another two charges taken into consideration for sentencing.
The prosecutor asked for a sentence of 25 months' jail and two strokes of the cane per proceeded charge, pointing out that the offences had occurred on "a number of separate occasions".
Defence lawyer Chua Eng Hui asked for one stroke of the cane per charge, saying that his client was remorseful and had pleaded guilty from the start.
District Judge Hamidah Ibrahim asked for a victim impact statement, a statement relating to any physical, psychological or psychiatric harm suffered by the victim as a result of the offence, and adjourned sentencing to next month.
For each charge of using criminal force on the teenager to outrage her modesty, the tutor can be jailed for up to two years, fined, caned, or given any combination of these punishments.
