Re: Ex-school principal in commercial sex case jailed 9 weeks
The onus is on the guy to walk away if she can't produce the age verification ID. Just walk away.
As for the jail term, it wasn't unexpected.
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Onus on men to verify prostitute is above 18
By Tham Yuen-C & Bryna Sim
The law was enacted in February 2008 and within six months, two men became the first to be charged for having paid sex with an underage girl.
The girl was a 16-year-old from China. The men, aged 55 and 61 and fathers of teenage girls themselves, ended up in prison.
Under Section 376B of the Penal Code, anyone found guilty of having paid sex with someone under the age of 18 can be jailed a maximum of seven years and fined.
In introducing the legislation in Parliament in 2007, former Senior Minister of State for Home Affairs and Law Ho Peng Kee said: 'Young persons, because they are immature and vulnerable and can be exploited, should be protected from providing sexual services.'
He added that, in setting the age of protection at 18, Singapore was joining countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia, which had adopted a similar approach.
This move was in line with the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the 1996 Stockholm Declaration and Agenda for Action.
Now, four years since the law was enacted, it has come into the public eye again, after 48 men were charged in court last week for having paid sex with a Singaporean girl aged below 18.
Public reaction has been unusually vocal, about both the men, for the way their faces were captured in the media, and the girl.
She allegedly had sex with all 48 men between September 2010 and October last year, and charged them between $450 and $850 a session.
Nominated MP and law academic Eugene Tan said the law was passed because of concerns about young girls being trafficked into Singapore for prostitution.
Women's rights advocate Saleemah Ismail, 43, noted that she had pushed for change since 2003, after she saw girls as young as 12 working as prostitutes in Batam for Singapore men.
Related to Section 376B is 376C, which criminalises paid sex with anyone under 18 outside Singapore. Both Singaporeans and permanent residents are subject to this legislation.
Ms Saleemah, who was the president of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (Unifem) from 2003 to 2007, said it joined hands with other groups to organise a three-day regional conference in 2005 on underage girls being trafficked for prostitution.
Later that year, several women MPs such as Indranee Rajah and Amy Khor spoke in Parliament on sex trafficking.
Said Ms Saleemah: 'It's been an interesting journey, and I'm very happy that they have tightened the law. Changes take time but they do happen.'
Ms Nicole Tan, the president of women's group Aware, said young people require special protection because of their immaturity.
'The fact that one might not agree with a girl's decisions and actions is no reason to deny her the protection afforded to all juveniles,' she said.
In the case of the two men who were the first to be convicted under Section 376B, the courts made it clear that the onus is on the men to verify that a prostitute is above 18. Not knowing is not an excuse.
Mr Tan Chye Hin, a renovation contractor, was jailed nine months. He knew the girl was a minor.
Mr Rodney Sim, an accountant, had sex twice with the girl. He claimed he did not know she was a minor.
So when she complained that she and a friend were being abused by her pimp, he took them to the Chinese embassy to help them and later to the police to lodge a report. And this was what landed him in trouble.
While the facts of his case were different from those in Tan's, the judge ruled that a fine alone would not be appropriate, as the law was enacted to protect the vulnerable group of under-18 minors from being sexually exploited.
Sim, he added, should have insisted on verifying the girl's age from her passport before engaging her services, instead of relying on the bare representations of the pimp and the minor.
As Sim's friend said later, after Sim was jailed for two weeks and fined $16,000: 'It is a lesson learnt. What he did could happen to anyone in a moment of weakness.'
