Man who tried to flee Singapore over sexual assault of 15-year-old gets jail, caning

After skipping a court hearing where he was due to plead guilty to sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl, a 21-year-old man went to Pulau Ubin, looking for someone to help him flee the country.

He could not find anyone to take him to Malaysia, so he returned to the mainland and was arrested the next day near a hotel in Bencoolen.

On Monday (March 21), the man, now 22, was sentenced by the High Court to nine years' jail and six strokes of the cane after he pleaded guilty to one count each of sexual assault by penetration and obstructing the course of justice.

Seven other charges, including a second charge of sexual assault by penetration and a charge of attempted rape against the same victim, were taken into consideration during sentencing.

The accused is one of two men, then working as waiters, who sexually assaulted the victim at the foot of a block of flats at Pasir Ris Street 51 in 2017.

The parties cannot be named due to a gag order to protect the victim's identity.

In the early hours of Oct 17 that year, the girl became drunk after a game of Truth Or Dare at a void deck with a group of friends.

When the group left the block, the girl had to be piggybacked, as she was too drunk to walk properly.

At about 4am, the two perpetrators and the girl became separated from the others who had gone ahead.

The girl lay on the ground, and when she did not respond to their attempts to rouse her, they sexually violated her.

The co-accused, then 19, raped the girl while the accused held her head.

The accused, then 18, also tried to rape her but gave up after a short while and instead forced oral sex from the victim, who was too weak to resist.

Later, police officers on patrol approached the group as the girl was crying. She eventually gave a full account at the police station.

The accused was arrested that day and released on bail on Dec 26, 2017.

He formed the intention to abscond from a scheduled court date to plead guilty on March 22 last year , in the days prior to the hearing.

He persuaded a friend and his own girlfriend to help him, lying to them that he was wanted by the police for scamming others.

At about 9am on March 22, 2021, he and his father met his lawyer at a building adjacent to the court for breakfast, but he slipped away on the pretext of going to the toilet.

Meanwhile, a warrant of arrest was issued against him when he failed to show up in court.

After changing his attire, he and his friend took a ferry to Pulau Ubin from Changi Point Ferry Terminal.

However, they returned to the mainland at 2.35pm after failing to find anyone who would take them to Malaysia illegally.

That evening, he asked his girlfriend for $100 to pay for a night's stay at a hotel in Bencoolen and got his friend to book the hotel room.

Meanwhile, the accused's father called his son's girlfriend for help to get him to surrender. The girlfriend found a report in The Straits Times about him absconding but the accused denied that he was the person referred to in the article.

The next afternoon, the accused and his friend were arrested while they were waiting for a taxi in the vicinity of the hotel.

At a hearing on April 16 last year, the court did not forfeit the bail posted by the accused's father, after the prosecution said it was not asking for the $30,000 to be forfeited.

The man's co-accused had earlier pleaded guilty to one count of rape and was sentenced to a jail term of 8 years, 10 months' and 27 days, with nine strokes of the cane.