Man guilty of hitting ex-girlfriend, releasing explicit photos

SINGAPORE — Suspecting that his then-girlfriend was seeing others behind his back, a man threw a mobile phone at her face in a fit of anger and punched her about five times near her left eye.

A day after the assault, the 32-year-old man accessed the victim’s Facebook account from her phone, and sent her elder sister nude photographs of her performing sexual acts. He also threatened to circulate these photographs to other people.

Both the man and the victim cannot be named due to a gag order.

Yesterday, a district court found the man guilty of criminal intimidation and voluntarily causing hurt.

A third charge of committing a rash act to endanger the personal safety of the victim will be taken into consideration for sentencing.

On the afternoon of Feb 5 this year, the man asked the victim, 31, to follow him back to his house to discuss their relationship. They had known each other since 2000, and started dating sometime in 2014.

At his house, the couple had a heated argument after the man accused the victim of having affairs behind his back. He snatched her mobile phone to check her messages and Facebook account, but did not find anything to confirm his suspicions.

Enraged, he threw the phone at the victim’s face before raining blows on her left eye. Locked in the house and unable to call for help as her boyfriend had taken her phone away, the victim cried and pleaded to be taken to the hospital.

The man relented and sent her to Ng Teng Fong General Hospital at about 7pm where she received eight days of medical leave.

Fearful of her boyfriend, who was waiting outside the examination room, the victim did not disclose to the doctor how she sustained the injuries.

At about 10pm, the man took the victim back to his HDB block instead of letting her go home. She took the chance to flee when the man went upstairs to his flat to use the toilet.

Further investigations showed that the victim’s male cousin had overheard the argument after a call was made to him through Facebook Messenger.

Court documents did not state who had made the call and whether this was done accidentally.

The cousin then informed the victim’s elder sister who, together with her family members, went to the man’s block to look for the victim.

But their car was spotted by the man, who made the victim move to another part of the block to avoid her family.

The following day, the man accessed the victim’s Facebook account from her phone, and sent threatening messages to her elder sister. He claimed that the victim had used his name to borrow money from loansharks. He also sent her three lewd photographs of the victim.

Throughout the day, the man continued sending messages to the victim’s elder sister, suggesting that he would harm the victim and her family’s reputation.

He also threatened to go to their house and show “his crazy side”.

Even after the victim changed the password to her Facebook account, the man used another account to send intimidating messages to her sister. On the night of Feb 6, the victim lodged a police report.

The man will be sentenced on Friday.