SINGAPORE — For more than a decade, the vice-principal of a primary school took advantage of his teenage student, who looked up to him as a mentor.

In 2003, when the man was 41 years old, he began abusing the 14-year-old Chinese national by performing a sex act on him in the school’s gym. This went on when the boy began taking English tuition lessons in the man’s Woodlands home.

The man convinced him that it was “normal and healthy” for males to masturbate each other to release their sexual desires and urges, then performed more sex acts on him.

At the end of 2004, the man became the teen’s guardian — after his previous guardian was sent home by the authorities — and continued assaulting him in his bedroom when the boy moved into his home.

Several years passed and the sexual abuse lessened in frequency. In 2011, the victim was 22 years old when he discovered he had contracted the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhoea, which led him to stop giving in to the man’s advances.

He ultimately made a police report in 2015.

Neither the victim, who is now 30 years old, nor the former vice-principal — now 57 years old — can be named due to a court gag order to protect the victim’s identity. The school’s name was similarly redacted from court documents.

On Tuesday (Aug 27), the man was found guilty of three counts of sexual exploitation of a young person and five counts of carnal intercourse against the order of nature, which took place from 2003 to 2006.

The latter charges fell under Section 377 of the 1985 revised edition of the Penal Code, which was repealed in 2007. Another such charge was withdrawn after the prosecution closed its case.

Meanwhile, two other charges under the Films Act — for possessing one uncensored film and nine obscene films — were stood down before the trial began in the State Courts last year.

In convicting the man on Tuesday, District Judge Chay Yuen Fatt said he believed the victim’s testimony and rejected the man’s defence, which he found “wholly self-serving”.

He will return to court for sentencing on Sept 24, and remains out on bail of S$15,000.

For carnal intercourse, he could be jailed for up to 10 years and fined. For committing an indecent act on a young person, he could be fined up to S$10,000, or jailed for up to five years, or both.

A Ministry of Education spokesperson told TODAY the man has been suspended from duty since December 2015 and is not deployed at any school.

"MOE takes a serious view of staff misconduct and will not hesitate to take disciplinary action against those who fail to adhere to our standards of conduct and discipline, including dismissal from service. All educators are expected to conduct themselves in a manner which upholds the integrity of the profession and the trust placed in them," the spokesperson added.

THE VICTIM’S TESTIMONY

The victim arrived in Singapore from China when he was about nine years old. He became the vice-head prefect of the school in Primary 5 in 2003, and reported to the man every morning in his office.

One weekend, during a rehearsal for a workout event that year, the man pushed the victim to the wall of the school’s gym and began touching him. The boy did not know how to react.

The next year, the boy became head prefect of the school. He started going for one-on-one English tuition lessons at the man’s home on weekends, when the man showed him some printed articles about masturbation.

The boy thought that while two men masturbated each other, they would be thinking of the opposite sex, so he let the man touch him.

The man did it again the next weekend, this time telling the boy that he loved him very much, and trying to kiss him.

The victim testified that the man committed similar acts against him about once every two weeks, during tuition lessons.

At the end of 2004, after the victim completed his Primary School Leaving Examination, his guardian was repatriated by the immigration authorities. The man offered to become his guardian and asked him to move in, which the boy felt “honoured and privileged” by.

The man asked him to share a bed with him every night. There, he continued performing sexual acts on the victim.

The victim also grew close to the man’s parents, regarding them as grandparents and seeing the man as a fatherly figure.

DOUBTS BEGAN TO EMERGE

When the victim entered Secondary 3 in 2006, he started to doubt what the man was doing and whether it was normal.

In 2007, he grew more resistant to the man’s advances but still gave in due to the pressure. When the man was hospitalised at the end of that year for a heart condition, he testified that his sense of gratitude and appreciation towards the man was strongly rekindled.

But in 2008 and 2009, when the victim was in junior college, he began thinking about moving out. He knew what they were doing was not right, but felt obliged to take care of the man’s elderly parents.

When he found out he had gonorrhoea in 2011, he decided not to let the man sexually abuse him anymore.

In June 2013, the pair went on a trip to Scandinavia. The victim met a woman and secretly began dating her, before telling her what the man had done.

They have since tied the knot.

With her encouragement, he moved out of the house after returning to Singapore. The man told him not to report the matter to the police or he could commit suicide.

In August 2015, the victim chanced upon the man’s niece at his workplace. The niece encouraged him to make a police report, saying he could have done the same thing to other boys.

Still, the victim was reluctant to go to the authorities as he knew the man would lose his job and his family would be affected. He was also worried that his own reputation would be at stake, and did not want his own parents to find out.

In November 2015, the victim contacted the man and asked for S$200,000 in compensation, after discussing the matter with his wife and law student friend.

In the following days, the man grew unresponsive. When they eventually met in person on Nov 24, 2015, he served a legal letter on the victim.

The victim lodged a police report the next day. The man was then arrested.

In his defence during the trial, the man said that he thought the victim was asking for compensation because he had caned the boy a few times in primary school.

While he admitted in his police statements that the boy had slept in his bedroom, he claimed while giving testimony that the boy slept in his own room.