THE boys came to him for tuition, some as young as eight years old.
They looked up to him as their teacher. At times, he would ask them to stay behind after class.
But instead of helping his pupils with their schoolwork, the 50-year-old subjected them to a harrowing ordeal of sexual abuse.
He would order them to strip, blindfold them and even video his crimes.
In all, the bespectacled, stooped man abused eight boys over two years at a tuition centre in the north-eastern part of Singapore. The youngest was eight and the oldest, 13.
Yesterday, he was convicted of sexual assault and molestation. He was convicted of five of 36 charges against him. Another 19 were taken into consideration.
The tutor, who is single, cannot be named to avoid identifying his victims. He worked at the centre for nearly 20 years before targeting his first victim in 2007, the court heard.
A year later, he began abusing a different boy, aged 11. He started by frequently kissing and hugging the boy. He then began asking the boy to stay behind after class. Once alone, he would lock the door and the abuse would begin.
Once, he took the boy to a corner of the tuition centre which was hidden from public view, and told him to take his clothes off.
The teacher also stripped, then began kissing the boy all over his body. He then performed sex acts on the boy twice.
He was caught in November last year, when two police reports were made accusing him of molestation.
When he was arrested at his home in Yishun, police found video recordings of his victims and their nude pictures on his cellphone.
The court heard that one of the boys, now 12, told a psychiatrist he “felt gay” and “different from other students”. The pupil said he did not resist because he was afraid of what the tutor would do with the photos.
Defence lawyer Josephus Tan claimed in mitigation that his client had been told by “ghosts” to carry out the abuse. He added that a psychiatric report had found him to be suffering from a “schizotypal” mental disorder, which means he suffered schizophrenia-type symptoms.
The tutor also told the psychiatrist that he had been molested when he was in Primary 4 and suffered hallucinations in which a 14-year-old boy told him to molest girls and boys.
The teacher’s extended family was in court yesterday to provide support, but declined to speak to the media. The hearing was adjourned so more information could be gathered for sentencing.
Source: ST Online
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