4 years' jail, caning for man, 31, who molested woman, pinned her on his bed after shared meal out
SINGAPORE — After getting drunk while at dinner with a woman he met on a social networking application, Bi Ran held the woman down on his bed after she had helped to take him home.The 31-year-old Chinese national touched the woman, 30, against her will both over and underneath her clothing despite her repeated protests and resistance.
On Wednesday (Sept 11), Bi pleaded guilty to one charge of using criminal force with the intent of outraging a person’s modesty.
He was sentenced to four years’ jail and four strokes of the cane.
Another two charges were taken into consideration in sentencing.
A court-imposed gag order bans the identification of the victim.
WHAT HAPPENED
At the time of the offence, Bi was renting a room in a unit which he shared with five other tenants.The woman worked in Singapore as a preschool teacher.
Sometime in January 2022, Bi and the woman met on Soul, a social networking application, and began chatting. They continued their conversation on messaging platform WeChat.
During their chats, Bi asked the woman to consider dating him. He also asked her out to dinner on a few occasions.
However, she rejected Bi’s advances, and also declined the dinner invitations.
On the evening of Feb 5, 2022, Bi contacted the woman again on WeChat and invited her to dinner at a restaurant in Chinatown.
She initially declined as she needed to run some errands after work. Bi, however, insisted that he was willing to wait for her.
As the woman had not had her dinner yet, she agreed to meet him then.
The pair met in Chinatown for dinner at about 7.45pm that night.
During the dinner, the woman had two 500ml bottles of beer, while Bi drank around five to six bottles of beer.
At around 11pm, both Bi and the woman booked separate private hire cars to head home.
Noting that Bi was intoxicated, his private hire car driver refused to pick him up.
The woman decided to help Bi to get home, by booking a multi-destination ride – first, to Bi’s home, and then to her home.
When their private hire car arrived at Bi’s block, the woman helped him out of the car and he sat down on the walkway.
As she was about to leave in the private hire car, however, a female passerby chided her for leaving Bi by the road without helping him home.
Feeling bad, the woman terminated the rest of her private-hire car trip, and helped Bi back to his unit.
Bi handed her his unit and room keys, and the woman helped him to open both his main and room doors. The pair entered Bi’s room sometime around 11.30pm that night.
Bi laid on his bed, and the woman turned to leave the room. As she tried to leave, Bi hooked an arm around the woman’s neck from behind, and pulled her onto his bed.
He told her that he wanted to hug her for a while. Thinking it was a friendly gesture, the woman relented.
After a short hug, she attempted to stand up to leave.
However, Bi then held her down and pushed her towards the centre of his bed, while kissing her on her face. He also started touching her breasts over her clothing, before reaching underneath her dress to touch her.
The woman struggled and tried to push Bi away, while repeatedly telling him that she did not want to have sexual intercourse with him.
Bi, however, continued to pin the woman down on his bed, and also tried to pull down her underwear, which became torn in the struggle. Bi then touched the woman’s private parts.
He later also straddled the woman, and used a sex toy he kept in his side table cabinet to touch her breasts, buttocks, and waist.
The woman continued to struggle, and eventually fell off the bed. She shouted for help, and told Bi that she would shout even louder.
When he told her not to do so, she quickly gathered her belongings and hurriedly left the unit at around midnight on Feb 6, 2022.
At about 3.30pm that day, the woman lodged a police report, stating that she was sexually assaulted at Bi’s home the night before.
Bi contacted the woman later that same night, asking if she knew where his spectacles were. He also texted her photographs of his vomit and asked her to take care of him.
The woman ignored his request and blocked him on WeChat.
As Bi continued to repeatedly send her “friend requests” on WeChat, the woman unblocked him the next morning to scold him for what he did the night before. She then ceased further contact with Bi.
The woman underwent a medical examination at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital at about 9.15pm on Feb 6, 2022. She was diagnosed with slight abrasions on her external elbows and her right lower face, which she had sustained as a result of her struggle with Bi.
For wrongfully restraining a person in order to commit an offence, Bi could have been jailed for between two and 10 years, and caned.
