He was a model teacher at a school in the east, popular among his colleagues and his pupils, and voted 'most caring teacher' by his young charges.
He also bagged several school awards, received letters of praise from parents and sat on the school's disciplinary committee to handle its most difficult pupils.
But on Monday, it was the 38-year-old bachelor's turn to be disciplined in a court of law - for molesting two boys and performing oral sex on a third in 2009.
He will be jailed for 10 years and given six strokes of the cane for the offences that were committed between March and July of that year.
He racked up 11 charges of molestation and sexual penetration of a minor, but pleaded guilty to two counts each of molestation and sexual penetration; the other charges were taken into consideration in the sentencing.
Neither he nor his victims, the oldest of whom was aged 11, can be named.
His deeds came to light on July 17 that year, when a pupil complained to the school's principal about being molested by this teacher.
Three victims were uncovered.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Sellakumaran Sellamuthoo said the teacher took an eight-year-old to a computer laboratory on July 10 that year, and there, he offered his Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) to the boy to play.
While the boy was engrossed in the computer game, the teacher unzipped and pulled down the boy's shorts and underwear, and performed oral sex on him.
He then told the boy not to talk about this to anyone. Three days later, he did it again to this boy in a men's toilet cubicle.
The court heard that four months before that, the teacher had offered another boy aged 11 the PSP, and put his hand into the boy's shorts.
Some time in May, he asked a third victim, then eight, to sit at the back of the class. He then sat next to the boy, rubbed his thigh and touched his bottom from the outside of his shorts.
Citing aggravating factors, DPP Sellakumaran told District Judge Liew Thiam Leng that the victims were young and unable to defend themselves, as he was their teacher and in a position of authority.
The DPP added that the teacher had abused his position of trust and responsibility, used his PSP as a lure and sought to morally corrupt his victims by buying their silence.
The prosecutor said the abuse had taken place repeatedly in school, a place that should have been considered safe.
A former colleague of the teacher, who was in the school at the time of the incidents, told The Straits Times that he and his colleagues were shocked when told what the teacher had done.
'We couldn't believe he would do something like that. He looked like a decent goody-two-shoes, but was never awkward with people. We liked him and the pupils loved him as he had such a way with them,' he said.
This colleague added that when the teacher suddenly stopped showing up, and then resigned, many suspected something was up.
The teacher, who had no lawyer, could have been jailed for up to 20 years, fined or caned on each charge of sexual penetration. For outrage of modesty, he could have been jailed for up to two years, fined, caned, or dealt any combination of these penalties on each charge.
Nobody from his family turned up in court on Monday.
Source: ST Online
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