5 months’ jail for man who threatened estranged girlfriend with knife for sex

SINGAPORE — Angry with his estranged girlfriend for not having had sex with him for a long time, a 22-year-old threatened her with a flip knife until she agreed to have intercourse during a staycation later that month.

Several days later, she called the police to say that he was outside her home and threatening to hurt his pet dog.

The man, now aged 25, was on Wednesday (Sept 7) sentenced to five months’ jail after earlier pleading guilty to criminal intimidation and being armed with an offensive instrument.

Four other similar charges were taken into consideration for sentencing.

He cannot be named due to a court order to protect the identity of his ex-girlfriend, who is two years younger than him.

His pro bono lawyer, Mr Chua Hock Lu, told the court that he intends to appeal against the sentence. District Judge Kessler Soh allowed him to defer his jail time by two weeks because of that.

WHAT HAPPENED

The court heard that the couple met on dating application Tinder in May 2018 and began dating. Close to a year later on April 7 in 2019, they went to the void deck of a public housing block where she lived and discussed the state of their relationship.

He asked her to have sex with him, because they had not slept together since their relationship began deteriorating three months after they started dating.

When she rebuffed his advances, he grew angry and held his flip knife beside her body before saying, “Really cannot?”

He usually carried the weapon around with him due to his urge to self-harm, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Chong Ee Hsiun told the court.

The man then flipped the blade out when she continued to reject his request for sex.

He poked the blade tip against her thigh, asked her whether it hurt, and explained that the poking sensation represented how much he had been hurting due to their relationship turning sour.

She started crying and he then placed the blade tip at her neck, continuing to ask if it hurt. He also said that this was how he had been feeling the entire time.

She eventually agreed to have sex with him during a staycation later that month.

In response, he put the knife back in his shirt pocket, waited for her to calm down and took a taxi home.

She made a police report over the incident about two weeks later, but had to call the police again shortly afterwards when he appeared outside her home with his dog and threatened to hurt the pet.

He was placed under arrest then.

Earlier in March 2019, he had threatened to hack her Instagram account and post videos and photos of them having sex. He had taken these when their relationship was in a better state.

When they began having problems, she had personally deleted the material from his computer and mobile phone, but she was unaware that he kept copies of them on other electronic devices.

DPP Chong, who sought five to eight months’ jail, noted that the young man had been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, anxiety and depressive disorder as well as alcohol disorder by the Institute of Mental Health (IMH).

However, the IMH psychiatrist stated that his mental illnesses had no contributory link to his offences of possessing intimate videos and threatening to distribute them.

The prosecutor argued that although his mental state played a mitigating role in his other offences, the sentencing principle of deterrence should still feature in the penalty.

For criminal intimidation, the young man could have been jailed up to two years or fined, or punished with both.

He also could have been jailed up to two years for possessing an offensive weapon.