Company director convicted of additional charges of molesting subordinate following appeal

SINGAPORE — A High Court judge on Wednesday (Dec 21) convicted a 56-year-old man of two more charges of outrage of modesty and one charge of insulting the modesty of his former employee, overturning earlier acquittals of these offences. 

Tan Chee Beng, who was a company director at the victim's workplace at the time of the incidents, was convicted in September last year of one count of outrage of modesty.

He was sentenced to five months’ jail, following a trial that began in November 2020, but was acquitted of the three other charges.

The prosecution filed an appeal against the acquittals, while the defence appealed against the conviction and sentence.

Justice Vincent Hoong on Wednesday found that the victim’s account was consistent and externally corroborated, while any inconsistencies pointed out by the defence were smaller details that did not affect the charges.

He also took issue with the defence’s earlier arguments in relation to the victim’s belated police report, how she had continued to accept car rides from Tan and did not scream for help during the molestations.

On Tan's decision not to testify during the trial, Justice Hoong said that his “election to remain silent against the weight of the evidence strengthens the finding of guilt against him”.

WHAT HAPPENED

The court heard from the victim during the trial that the first two incidents occurred between Aug 15 and Sept 10 in 2018.

While standing “really close” beside her at her desk, Tan told her that her hair smelled nice. He then said he was aroused and pulled her hand to his groin area.

She pulled her hand away and told him "don't". 

When asked by the prosecution if she could tell that Tan had an erection, she said: “I could see from the corner of my eye, there was a bump around his groin area.”

Tan then allegedly tried to pull her hand towards him again, but she told him to stop before getting up from her chair and leaving the office.

“I was a single mum with two kids and I really needed the job. I was afraid that if I made a police report, I would lose my job, they would fire me,” she testified.

She said that Tan molested her a second time the next month when she was wearing a dress at work and standing next to a whiteboard.

She demonstrated how Tan swiped at her crotch area over her dress twice in quick succession.

Sometime in Jan 2019, he molested her again while they were alone in a cold room. She was checking on produce when he touched her back and the side of her breast.

She filed a police report after the third incident.

VICTIM’S ACCOUNT CONSISTENT DOWN TO ‘IMMATERIAL FACTS’

Delivering his oral judgement on Wednesday, Justice Hoong said that he disagreed with the district court judge’s finding that the victim was “not unusually convincing” in her testimony.

Justice Hoong found that the victim was consistent in her accounts “even when she was put under pressure and faced with difficult and directed questions” by the defence counsel.

He added that her consistency extended to details about “immaterial facts” and that the victim did not overstate her claims.

She made concessions “such as her inability to remember when the first incident occurred” and “readily explained precise degree of intrusion” even when it minimised Tan’s culpability, he noted.

Justice Hoong also found that her testimony was consistent with documentary evidence and was corroborated by other witnesses.

For example, after the second incident, the victim was urged by a colleague to confront Tan about it and she did that via a text message.  

The message was produced during the trial. The victim testified that Tan immediately called her to apologise and asked her to delete the message, but she kept it for her “safety” and because she felt “very suspicious” of Tan’s request.

A colleague’s version and timeframe of the three incidents were also consistent with the victim's description of the events. 

The defence had pointed to inconsistencies between the victim’s evidence and that of the other witnesses.

Justice Hoong was of the view that “excessive weight” was placed on what he described as “immaterial details that the witnesses could not have been expected to recite with exactitude years after the incidents had taken place”.

Fundamentally, none of the inconsistencies related to any elements of the charges and the material aspects of the witnesses remained the same, he said.

TRIED TO RESUME NORMAL WORKING RELATIONSHIP

The judge on Wednesday said that the “central tenet” of the defence was that the victim had filed the report belatedly.

The defence had said that the victim's willingness to accept car rides from Tan after the second incident meant that she had “willingly placed herself in circumstances where she would be alone and in close proximity with (Tan)”.

Justice Hoong said he found that there were good reasons for the delay between the first molestation and the police report, noting that she was afraid of jeopardising her job and Tan had apologised to her after she messaged him about the incidents.

“Viewed collectively, the complainant simply elected to accept the accused’s apology, with the hope that he would stop his inappropriate actions given her need to retain a job to support her family,” Justice Hoong added.

He also said it was “well within the realm of possibilities” that the victim continued to accept the car rides from him after he apologised for what he did, especially since she wished to keep her job and to return to a normal working relationship with Tan. 

“Indeed, to reject his offers for a car ride could have soured relations under circumstances where it was (not) impossible to avoid him, as the company was a small set-up with few employees.” 

It was after only the third molestation occurred that Tan’s apology was shown up as a “hollow one” and that his actions would not stop, such that the victim made a police report, the judge said.

VICTIMS 'CANNOT BE STRAIGHTJACKETED' INTO REACTING A CERTAIN WAY

Justice Hoong also disagreed with the district court judge’s finding that the victim’s failure to scream during any of the molestations had affected her credibility.

“With respect, this was an improper finding to make, especially given the district judge’s own recognition that victims of sexual crimes cannot be straightjacketed into reacting or behaving a certain way,” he said.

“Moreover, this point about her alleged failure to scream was never raised during the course of the complainant’s testimony and hence, no reason could have been given by her for why she failed to ‘shout for help’."

He pointed to the prosecution’s argument that a scream would have achieved little, since the contact between Tan and the victim was brief and Tan could have simply retracted his hand at the time, leaving no trace of intrusion.

Finally, Tan, “who was the only other person” besides the victim who could have been present and could give an alternate account, had elected not to give evidence during the trial despite facing mounting evidence against him.

The judge noted how Tan had failed to respond to incendiary messages by another director of the firm after the incident that “had described him as having molested the complainant”.

“Put simply, his election to remain silent against the weight of the evidence strengthens the finding of guilt against him.”

The High Court judge ordered both sides to file their sentencing submissions by February 2023.