Badminton coach gets 5 years' jail for sex with underage boy
The boy had looked up to his badminton coach as a role model and a mentor.
But the man abused his position and even manipulated the underage boy to have sex with him.
Once, he even asked the then-14-year-old boy to join him and a male prostitute for a threesome.
The freelance badminton coach, now 32, was sentenced to five years' jail yesterday. To protect the boy's identity, he cannot be named.
Also given a jail sentence yesterday was a former teacher who had unlawful sexual relations with his underage student.
Before handing out the sentence to the badminton coach, District Judge Salina Ishak said: "The accused had corrupted the victim and abused that relationship of trust when he got the victim to engage in sexual activities with him for the first time."
The judge said she took into account factors such as the vulnerability of the minor, the coach's position of trust, and that the offences were the result of his grooming and pressurising the boy for a long time.
She also considered the manner in which he had obtained the boy's consent as an aggravating factor, especially since it was obtained through lies, incentives, threats or emotional pressure.
The coach had pleaded guilty on Oct 27 last year to eight counts of sexual penetration involving the underage boy.
He also admitted to one count each of asking the youngster to perform an obscene act and committing an indecent act on the child.
The pair first met in 2012 when the boy was just 13 years old.
The teen had joined his school badminton team and the man was then its assistant coach.
The lanky man struck the following year, when he inappropriately touched the boy in the toilet of the school's indoor sports hall.
The court heard that from 2013 to October 2014, the man groomed and pressured the teen to take part in kinky sex with him.
On Oct 12, 2014, for example, they met a male sex worker at a People's Park Complex unit in Chinatown. The prostitute performed oral sex on both of them.
The man's offences came to light 12 days later when he drove the boy to an open-air carpark in Venus Drive, off Upper Thomson Road, where they performed oral sex on each other.
Police Sergeant Muhammad Ikhsan Said, who was patrolling in the area, spotted the boy naked in the man's car.
The man was arrested after he and the boy admitted that it was not the first time they had performed sexual acts on each other.
The judge allowed the coach, who is not represented by a lawyer, to start his sentence after Chinese New Year.
He is out on bail of $25,000 and will surrender to the court on Feb 15.
For each count of sexual penetration of a minor, he could have been jailed up to 10 years and fined.
The service of the coach was immediately terminated across the schools when the case was reported to MOE. Similar to educators, MOE expects external vendors hired by schools to hold themselves to high professional standards.
- Statement from MOE
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