Man with fetish disorder gets 36 months’ jail

SINGAPORE — He gets aroused by images of young boys vomiting and defecating, but got bored with this type of content he could find online. So, Sean Chew Jun Yang, 26, set up fake Facebook accounts to dupe young boys into taking laxative pills on the pretext that it was for an experiment for a school project, then made them send him photos and videos for his sexual gratification.

Today (Nov 13), the final-year chemical engineering diploma student was sentenced to 36 months’ jail for hurting 13 victims, aged between 12 and 14, in this manner. He intends to appeal against the sentence.

Chew, who suffers from fetishistic disorder and has social avoidant personality traits, started his crime spree in May 2012, the court heard.

He created two Facebook accounts that he used for three years to pose as secondary schoolboys’ ex-schoolmates, in order to dupe them into helping with a bogus experiment.

As part of the experiment, the victim would have to consume 10 to 20 pills of Dulcolax, a laxative drug.

This was five to 10 times the recommended dosage, and made his victims suffer from severe bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea.

To conceal his identity, Chew left the pills at locations near the victims’ homes for them to pick up.

One of his victims took 10 pills each on three separate occasions over the span of a few days. On the last occasion, he even had a Skype video call with the victim, lying that this was to monitor his condition. Chew covered his webcam with masking tape and lied that it was damaged to avoid being identified.

One month into his offences, in June 2012, Chew was arrested. Police seized more than 300 Dulcolax pills from his home.

While out on bail, Chew committed the same offence on a 14-year-old victim, whom he asked to take videos of himself using the toilet. When he was arrested again in September last year, pictures of faeces and videos of the victim defecating and vomiting were found in the laptop seized from Chew’s home.

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Andre Chong said Chew had admitted then that he would have an erection when he thought of young boys defecating and admitted to masturbating to the photographs and videos of the victim’s faeces.

Chew was released on bail again but reoffended in June this year one more time, causing the victim to be admitted to hospital.

When he was arrested, Chew told investigators he had a fetish for vomitus and faeces.

As he wanted “something different” from the available content online, he decided to “obtain ‘live’ photos or videos of vomitus and faeces”, said DPP Chong.

In his mitigation plea, defence lawyer Sunil Sudheesan said his client did not have “proper insight into his condition and failed to appreciate the significance of treatment”, which resulted in his reoffending the first time round.

The lawyer noted that Chew continued to excel academically, obtaining average ‘A’ grades despite his mental illness. But District Judge Liew Thiam Leng said that besides Chew’s mental illness, other factors he had to consider include the serious nature of the offences, the fact that they were premeditated and that young victims were involved.

The victims were subjected to Chew’s whims and fancies, and had “suffered tremendously” from the bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea, the judge added.