Jail, caning for man who published nude photo of girlfriend on her Facebook account

SINGAPORE — He logged into his 18-year-old girlfriend’s Facebook account illegally and uploaded a nude photo of her. When police officers tried to arrest him, he slashed one of them on the right arm.

For causing grievous hurt and for violating the Computer Misuse and Cybersecurity Act, among other convictions, the 25-year-old cook was on Friday (Sept 22) jailed six years and two months, and given six strokes of the cane. He cannot be named to protect the identity of the girl.

The court heard that sometime on March 6 last year, the man had quarrelled with his girlfriend, who then started to ignore him.

Over the next four days, he signed into his girlfriend’s Facebook account and made changes to her profile and the log-in password when he was not authorised to do so. He also logged into her Gmail account and changed the password without permission.

On March 9 and 10, he posted a nude photo and compromising video of the girl on her Facebook profile.

Unable to log into her own Facebook account and afraid that more of such photos and videos would be circulated online, the girl made a police report on March 10.

At about 9.30pm that same day, three police officers dressed in civilian clothes arrived at the man’s home in Geylang East. They had enlisted the girl’s help to arrange to meet the man below his apartment block.

Station Inspector (SI) Jimmy Tan waited at the lift lobby and his two colleagues waited at the staircase landing for the man to leave his apartment.

However, the man saw someone near the staircase and doubled back to arm himself, by hiding a 33cm-long bread knife under his shorts.

When SI Tan approached the man and before he could take out his police pass to identify himself, the man whipped out his knife and slashed the officer’s bicep. The other two officers sprung into action and managed to disarm the man and arrest him, but SI Tan had sustained significant bleeding from the cut. Due to his injury, he returned to his normal duties a few months later.

The urine samples obtained by the police after the man was arrested showed that he had consumed “Ice” or methamphetamine. They also found a packet of crystallised substance in his bedroom that contained 0.71g of methamphetamine.

While he was out on court bail, the man cheated two other victims. In both cases, the man’s father made a restitution of S$1,300 and S$1,000 to the two victims.

The court also heard that the man had previous convictions for drug consumption and for having underage sex with a girl.

In mitigation, his lawyer Cory Wong said that his client relapsed into drug misuse when he broke up with his girlfriend.

The man was convicted of nine charges in total, including one count each for consumption and possession of drugs, and four counts of cheating.

His sentence was backdated to his date of remand on May 7 last year.

For causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means, he could have been jailed for life, or jailed up to 15 years and fined or caned.