SINGAPORE — While giving a woman a sports massage, Ken Lim Hup Kheng told her to flex her buttock muscles before molesting her and commenting, "Wow, it's really muscles".  

Lim, now aged 49, was sentenced to a fine of S$5,000 on Tuesday (Jan 10) after pleading guilty to one charge of using criminal force to outrage modesty. 

The court heard that sometime in May 2018, the 27-year-old victim was recommended by her physiotherapist to go for sports massages. 

She cannot be named due to an order imposed by the court to protect her identity. 

In June, the victim went to Lim to receive sports massages from him. According to court documents, he was working as a sports massage therapist with Urban Rehab, a physiotherapy and rehabilitation specialist clinic at Malacca Street. 

During one of her regular sessions on July 3 in 2021 at about 12.30pm, the victim was lying face-down on the massage table with a towel draped over her body. 

Lim then told her to flex her buttock muscles and she complied, thinking that it was part of a leg exercise that he wanted her to do.

Instead, Lim squeezed her right buttock over the towel with his hand and commented in Mandarin, "wow it's really muscles".

Court documents stated that the squeeze lasted for about a second before Lim resumed his massage routine. 

Shocked by the act, the victim did not know how to react and remained on the massage table until the session ended. 

After they were done, she cancelled her remaining massage appointments with Lim and lodged a complaint with the clinic's management, as well as a police report. 

For using criminal force to outrage the woman's modesty, Lim could have been jailed for up to three years, fined, caned or given a combination of any of these punishments.