SINGAPORE — A 28-year-old man was sentenced to 11 months’ jail on Wednesday (April 1) for molesting his neighbour’s domestic worker along the common corridor of their block of flats, then following her to her employer’s flat and further violating her there.

The helper stopped working for her employer out of distress, and left Singapore a month later when her work permit was cancelled.

The man, who cannot be named due to a court order to protect the victim’s identity, has mild intellectual disability, his lawyer Chong Xin Yi told the court.

He pleaded guilty earlier this year to two outrage of modesty charges, with another four taken into consideration for sentencing.

In 2018, he had served five months behind bars for molesting a 15-year-old schoolgirl at a bus stop.

The court heard that the latest incident happened on July 31 last year. 

The victim, a 30-year-old from Myanmar, chanced upon him at the lift lobby and they began chatting. He lived two units away from her employer.

After getting out of the lift, she walked in front of him along the common corridor. He suddenly hugged her from behind and rubbed himself against her buttocks in a “thrusting motion”, Deputy Public Prosecutor Emily Koh told the court.

She told him to stop but to no avail and managed to break free from him to run to the entrance of her employer’s flat.

As she struggled to open the metal gate, he hugged her tightly again and kissed her once on the lips. When she pushed him away, he hugged her from the front and touched her inappropriately once more.

She finally managed to get into the flat, but lost her balance and fell.

When she sat up, he held her head in his hands and pushed her head towards his crotch, but she pushed him away again and fell backwards. He then proceeded to lie on top of her.

Her employer finally came to her rescue after she shouted for help. The man left the flat and the helper made a police report at the Marine Parade Neighbourhood Police Centre the next day.

In mitigation, Ms Chong said that her client attended several special schools for the intellectually disabled. 

His condition also caused him to “minimise the behaviour which he thinks is wrongful or socially inappropriate” and have less control over his impulses, a report from the Institute of Mental Health stated.

He was living with his grandmother at the time and has since moved to live with his mother, the lawyer added.