Updated: 07/23/2013 14:49 | By Channel NewsAsia
Facebook sex predator jailed 54 months
SINGAPORE: An operations manager has been sentenced to 54 months' jail for various offences, including sex with minors, cheating and criminal intimidation.
Emmanuel Lim Chin Pin, 22, was convicted of five counts of having sex with a minor -- one count of indecent act with a child, one of attempted sex with a minor, one of cheating and one charge that relates to criminal intimidation.
Thirteen other charges were taken into consideration for sentencing purposes.
Lim admitted that he committed the offences involving four students, aged 13 to 14, over a two-year period between August 2010 and October 2012.
In sentencing him, District Judge Mathew Joseph described this as a "deeply disturbing case".
The judge highlighted the "malignant manner" in which Lim executed the sexual abuse with the use of popular social network, Facebook.
Lim's modus operandi was to send out messages to hundreds of girls using Facebook, asking if they were interested in a part-time job that pays S$25 an hour.
He would tell the girls they had to give feedback on a "massage service".
Lim would then pretend to be the "masseuse".
In reading his grounds for decision, Judge Joseph described Lim's acts as "devious and unconscionable".
In particular, the judge noted that the manner in which the sexual abuse was carried out on the fourth victim was "particularly repugnant".
Lim had made the girl strip off her school uniform before molesting and sexually abusing her.
The judge said the girl could not bear to look at Lim and turned away.
The accused, instead of stopping, made the girl blindfold herself, which she failed. The girl ended up covering her face with her school uniform.
The judge called it "the most pitiful, humiliating and degrading scene for anyone to behold".
He said Lim only stopped and let the victim leave when she promised that she owed him 10 minutes of massage.
"It was soul-destroying and should have caused the accused to come to his senses and stop. He did not. He continued abusing her even more. This grotesque scene lasted for a terrifying 50 minutes. Unable to bear it any longer, the victim promised to owe him another 10 minutes of massage if he stopped," said the judge.
Describing Lim's acts as "loathsome and repulsive", the judge noted that some time later, the accused threatened the fourth victim into giving him the 10 minutes she had owed him.
Judge Joseph said he agreed with the prosecution that this was one of the worst cases of sex with a minor in recent times.
While the judge noted that Lim grew up in a socially-disadvantaged environment with parents who are ex-drug offenders, he said these are not significant mitigating factors.
He added that Lim has not shown the slightest remorse or offered the victims an apology.
Another highly aggravating factor pointed out by the judge was that Lim committed the same offence with the same modus operandi on his third victim, while on police bail.
In September 2011, Lim was also given a 12-month conditional stern warning for preying on his first victim.
Before passing the sentence, the judge stressed that no potential offender should ever think that young girls and children who use the Internet are easy targets to be sexually exploited and abused at will.
He said the courts will impose deterrent sentences that "reflect emphatically society's abhorrence and total denunciation of all such cowardly acts of sexual abuse". - CNA/xq
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