SINGAPORE: A man who inappropriately touched two young boys, aged eight and 11, on separate occasions has been sentenced to two years and eight months’ jail.
He had also filmed the younger child while performing an indecent act on him and made the victim blow a kiss towards a camera.
The 22-year-old Singaporean man, whose victims were his neighbours from the same block of flats, had earlier pleaded guilty to two charges of sexually exploiting a child and one charge of possessing obscene films.
He cannot be named due to a gag order to protect the children’s identities.
Before handing down the sentence on Jan 6, Deputy Principal District Judge Ong Chin Rhu noted that the man has a history of mental conditions including adjustment disorder with anxiety, but there were no causal links between them and his offences.
The judge also noted that while the offender was 20 years old when he started committing the offences in 2022, it would not be appropriate to treat him as a youthful offender due to the nature of his criminal acts.
The 11-year-old boy was identified as V1 in court documents and the eight-year-old was known as V2.
In earlier proceedings, the court heard that the offender first approached V1 in December 2022, but the boy ignored him.
When V1 chanced upon the man at the void deck again, the man persisted in speaking to him and followed V1 for a short distance.
Upon the man’s invitation, V1 went to the man’s unit on seven to eight occasions, where the man touched him inappropriately.
On one occasion, the man asked V1 to touch him but the child refused.
The man also hugged V1 at the void deck or a staircase landing on about five occasions.
On April 3, 2023, the man invited V2 to his unit and took a video of himself touching the child inappropriately. He even told V2 to “kiss for the camera” and the boy complied.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Melissa Heng told the court in November 2024 that the man kept the video for his own sexual gratification.
Court documents did not state what happened next but he was arrested on April 27, 2023.
Police seized from him two mobile phones containing multiple sexually explicit videos, including child sexual abuse material that he had downloaded from the internet.
The man’s bail was set at $20,000 on Jan 6 and he is expected to begin serving his sentence on Feb 3. - The Straits Times/ANN
