SINGAPORE: A former teacher from a top school in Singapore was sentenced to 54 days’ jail on Friday (Jul 7) for showing pornographic material to a teenage student.
The teen, who was 17 at the time, had been thinking of skipping school as he felt ostracised and felt he had no purpose in life, so his mother had reached out to the offender for help.
The 49-year-old man, whose identity is under gag order along with details of the school and the subject he taught, had pleaded guilty to one count of showing sexual material to the teen.
A second charge of possessing over 1,000 obscene video files was taken into consideration.
At the time of the offence, the man had been teaching for more than 22 years.
The victim was in year 6, the equivalent of junior college year 2. The offender was the boy’s form teacher since 2020.
In January 2021, the victim’s mother emailed the teacher, seeking help for her son as she wanted to find out how he was doing in school.
The teacher told the teen’s mother that he had noticed the boy was very withdrawn, less cheerful, tired and falling behind on schoolwork. They agreed for the teacher to find a chance to speak to the victim.
When the teacher spoke to the boy after class, the teen confided that he had been having negative thoughts and engaged in self-harm to cope with his emotions.
The man then gave his phone number to the victim, suggesting that it be saved under a different name as their conversation was “not exactly legit”.
The boy went home and told his mother what happened, expressing surprise and gratitude that an adult man could understand him so well.
The teacher began texting the boy. At the same time, he lied to the boy’s mother that he had obtained the green light from the school to handle the boy on his own.
In February 2021, the teacher led the boy to a consultation area in the school and gave him a self-help book. They began talking and discussing coping mechanisms for emotions.
The teacher told the victim that males of his age had only two ways to destress – “medication and masturbation”. This made the boy uncomfortable.
The teacher then began asking the boy sexual questions and showed him some links to pornographic websites.
He invited the boy to his flat a few days later, where he talked to the boy about watching porn and his experience visiting sex workers while on holiday in Bali.
Neither the victim nor the accused had told the victim’s parents about this meeting.
The teacher kept plying the teen with alcohol, continued to ask him sexual questions and showed him pornographic videos. The boy tried to avoid watching them, and the teacher noticed his discomfort.
When the teen wanted to leave, the teacher only booked a ride home for him about an hour later as he wanted the smell of alcohol to dissipate first.
The boy said that when he got home, he realised that “there was some immorality” in the teacher’s behaviour.
He told his mother about it the next day. The matter was escalated to school authorities and the vice-principal filed a police report. The teacher resigned that same month.
After his arrest, he said he had reached out to the victim out of genuine concern for the boy’s well-being. However, he said he also felt depressed and “starved of companionship”, so crossed boundaries.
He was assessed at the Institute of Mental Health and found to have major depressive disorder, benzodiazepine use disorder and some personality disorder traits. However, these conditions had no causal link with his offences, and he was fit to plead in court.
SENTENCING SUBMISSIONS
The prosecutor had sought three months’ jail, noting that the offence was relatively new, with no direct precedents to refer to.
Instead, the prosecution referred to precedents for similar offences such as sexual exploitation of a child or young person or exhibiting obscene objects to minors.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Yvonne Poon said the accused was the victim’s form teacher and had abused this formal position of trust.
On top of this, he further cultivated a personal relationship of reliance and independence between himself and the victim, making an effort to gain the latter’s trust.
The man already knew that the victim was in a position of acute vulnerability but went on to commit the offence “with nary an iota of consideration for the sort of havoc he might wreak upon the victim’s mental and emotional states through such exploitation”, said Ms Poon.
The teacher was also a “corrupting influence”, encouraging the teen to perform sexual acts, getting him to drink alcohol while underaged and touching the boy inappropriately.
However, she accepted the mitigation that the man has no prior convictions and has a generally unblemished and extended career as an educator, who genuinely cared for his students’ welfare.
The man had also been struggling with depression for almost 10 years.
The judge allowed the man to begin his jail term on Jul 17.
For making a teenager view pornographic material while he was in an exploitative relationship, the man could have been jailed for up to a year, fined, or both.