SINGAPORE — A 33-year-old married teacher was sentenced to three years and seven months’ jail on Thursday (March 19) for starting a sexual relationship with his 14-year-old student.

He plied her with gifts, sent her sexually explicit photographs and got her to lie to her parents so that they could be together. They stopped the illicit relationship when his wife got pregnant, but a few months later, they picked it up again.

He pleaded guilty last month to two counts of sexual penetration of a minor and one charge of sexual exploitation of a young person. Four other similar charges were taken into consideration for sentencing.

He cannot be named due to a court order to protect the identity of the girl, who is now 15 years old. The school’s name was also removed from court documents.

A spokesperson from the Ministry of Education said previously that he had stopped working for the ministry in April last year.

The court heard that the student and the teacher first got to know each other in 2017, when she was in Secondary 1.

Around March 2018, the girl posted on social media that she needed a new mobile phone because her father had confiscated hers several times when she was disobedient.

The teacher saw the post and a few weeks later, he told her that he had left a second-hand mobile phone for her in his pigeonhole in school, along with a S$50 note.

Throughout the year, the teacher and the student kept in frequent contact, sending each other phone text messages. It started out as just messages about school work, but gradually moved towards personal issues and then more intimate topics.

The man even bought her a wristwatch as a birthday present.

Around September 2018, the man felt guilty because his wife was pregnant and stopped contacting the student.

However, they resumed contact on a daily basis from January to March last year when he became concerned about some family problems that the girl was facing.

The messages they sent each other soon took on sexual overtones and they began exchanging sexually explicit photographs on the man’s initiative.

The girl confessed that she liked him.

On two occasions, the teacher took the student home, where they engaged in sex acts.

On one of these occasions, which was during the March school holidays, the man and the girl conspired to lie to her mother about a remedial class in school.

When the mother asked the teacher whether there was such a class, he lied to her, saying there was one. He also obtained permission to pick the girl up to take her to school and back to her mother’s workplace.

However, instead of taking her to school, he drove her to his home, where the girl allowed him to perform various sex acts on her.

The next month, the girl’s father found out about their relationship when he caught her using the mobile phone that was gifted to her.

The father reported the matter to the school’s principal after he found messages between his daughter and the teacher that suggested a romantic relationship between the pair.