SINGAPORE: On Tuesday, October 3, a previous crew member who appealed his sexual assault conviction was able to shorten his sentence in jail, but he was unsuccessful in getting the guilty verdict overturned.
Mustapah Abdullah, 51, was found guilty of sexually abusing three young boys in 2018 at a park drop.
He received a 23-year prison term and an extra year of non-caning punishment. He is older than 50 and cannot be caned.
His sentence was reduced on Tuesday to 18 years and six months in prison, which is five and a half decades less time.
Mustapah contested his faith and word at the Court of Appeal despite not having a lawyer for both his prosecution and the appeals procedure.
After adjusting the aggravating factors and how many of the prison terms for each of his three charges may operate at the same time, a section of three judges upheld his sentence but reduced his word.
The fact that Mustapah had no abused his power or trust over the victims and that they were not vulnerable individuals was a key dispute with the trial judge’s conclusion.
The crimes were committed when the three survivors were between the ages of 16 and 17. They got to know Mustapah around 2017 because they shared a neighborhood with him.
Mustapah was cordial and would share his past experience with the patients whenever they crossed paths. The three teenagers were aware that he was a former group member and ex-convict.
According to court records, they considered him to be a” big brother” and regarded him as their close friend.
However, this did not imply that Mustapah had any duty for the patients, according to Justice Judith Prakash, who delivered the Court of Appeal’s ruling.
Misuse of faith and authority refers to circumstances in which the criminal is” in a position of responsibility” for the victim or in whom they have placed their trust due to their line of work.
The bond between Mustapah and the victims was distinct from that of a household, where there is an established order of family members. Additionally, he did not hold a” quasi-parental” position toward them.
Before the crimes, they only had a close companionship, and in this instance, there was no abuse of power or faith, according to Justice Prakash.
The three youthful victims’ vulnerability was also disputed by the appellate courts.
Age, bodily weakness, mental illness or disorder, or learning disability, they said, may make a victim resilient. A younger target is probably thought to be more resilient when it comes to age.
Being in their early teenage times, the victims in this case were never particularly young teenagers, and none of them had any physical limitations that would have made them more resilient.
Justice Prakash noted that there were no such problems in this case and said,” Exposure must also be assessed by considering individual circumstances such as whether the sufferers were defenseless as they had fled from home.”
Additionally, she claimed that because the victims had previously interacted with gangsters, they weren’t so helpless or foolish as to be exploited by the criminal.
The judge observed that Mustapah had repeatedly threatened the patients and slapped and kicked them in the days leading up to the physical attack.
She claimed that because they were quick to agree with his demands during the sexual assaults, it was clear that they feared him and did not necessarily show exposure.
Mustapah’s verbal harassment and use of physical violence against the sufferers, which the trial judge found to be a second aggravating element, was not brought up by the administrative judges.
However, they discovered that there should have been a lower starting place in the prison term for each sexual assault offense absent the other two aggravating elements.
Additionally, they changed the terms of his world sentence so that, as opposed to the trial judge’s order, only two sentences for sexual assault would be served at the same time.
They claimed that by doing this, the sentence is” not significant or breaking” to the offender while also serving as a deterrent and reflecting his general criminality.
Other aspects of the test judge’s punishment decision were upheld by the judges, such as a longer jail sentence for Mustapah during his trial, when he launched broad personal attacks against the defendants and prosecution witnesses.
They furthermore rejected Mustapah’s other attempts to have his conviction overturned, including his assertion that the victims made up the story to fraudulently indict him and that they had given their consent to the attack.