SINGAPORE: Catfished by a 15-year-old boy posing as a woman, a teenager was made to perform a sexual act in front of a camera, subject his private parts to humiliating acts, cut and burn his hair with a lighter and play football naked.
The offender, who is now 18 and had posed as the woman, was sentenced to 21 months’ probation on Jan 12 after he pleaded guilty to one count each of cheating and extortion. He cannot be named because of a gag order to protect the victim’s identity.
As part of his sentence, he has to remain indoors from 10pm to 6am every day, and perform 110 hours of community service.
His parents were also bonded for S$5,000 (US$3,887) to ensure his good behaviour.
In February 2023, the offender posed as a woman online and misled the victim into entering a romantic relationship with “her”, identified in court documents as “X1”.
From then until December that year, the offender made the 18-year-old victim, who is his former schoolmate, perform the degrading acts as well as send him iTunes gift cards and cash amounting to a total value of S$390.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Stephen Yeo said: “The victim performed the acts as he believed that he was in a relationship with X1 and did so... to make X1 happy.”
The offender had initially wanted to “pull a prank” on the victim, said the DPP.
To ensure that the victim would fall for X1’s profile on Instagram, the offender downloaded inappropriate faceless pictures of girls from the internet.
After that, he used X1’s profile to send these pictures to the victim to give the impression that these were “her” photos.
The DPP said: “The accused made the victim perform degrading acts which did cause damage in mind to the victim in the form of humiliation.
“The acts also caused property damage to the victim as he sent the accused gift cards and cash.”
Separately, the offender committed extortion and received S$2,450 in total from the victim.
He had obtained several recordings of the victim performing a sexual act and threatened to distribute the videos.
In July 2023, the victim hid S$100 in a book at a Tampines Mall store for the offender to collect.
On four other occasions until December 2023, another S$2,350 was obtained from the victim by using the same threat and method.
The victim finally made a police report on June 8, 2024, and officers arrested the offender two days later. - The Straits Times/ANN
