Jail for student who hired woman on dating site, then choked her to satisfy his feet fetish

SINGAPORE — During a date with a woman he had booked on a date-rental website, Cheong Jia Jun took her to an isolated staircase landing at Changi Airport to film a TikTok video.

After he set up his phone to record the clip, Cheong held her in a chokehold from behind so that she would faint and he could satisfy his fetish of smelling her feet.

The Institute of Technical Education student, now 24, was jailed for eight months on Wednesday (Jan 5) after pleading guilty to one count of causing hurt. 

Another count of using criminal force was taken into consideration during sentencing for lifting the woman's shirt while she was unconscious. Cheong had wanted to molest her but eventually decided not to do so.

The court heard that Cheong booked the woman, who was then 37, on the website Maybe.sg sometime in mid-October 2020.

The platform provides male and female dates with prices ranging from S$90 to S$430 for each two-hour meet-up. Any form of physical contact, beyond a handshake, is expressly banned on the service.

The woman cannot be named due to a court order to protect her identity.

The pair met on Oct 26, 2020 and went for a walk at the Changi Jurassic Mile attraction before Cheong led her to a staircase in a car park at Terminal 4 of Changi Airport, saying he wanted to film a TikTok video with her.

While climbing up the stairs, Cheong opened the door at each level to check that there was nobody around.

At the fourth storey, he set his phone on a cabinet to film the video and told her to face the wall.

As she turned away from him, he choked her with his forearm from behind using a technique he learned from a martial arts course some time ago. 

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Norine Tan said that Cheong admitted during investigations that he knew there was a risk she could die from being choked.

The woman struggled for about 15 seconds to break free of his chokehold before she fainted. 

A recording taken from Cheong's phone that showed parts of the struggle before the woman fainted was played in court on Wednesday. 

While unconscious, Cheong laid her on the ground and lifted her shirt up to her abdomen as he wanted to molest her, DPP Tan said. 

A few seconds later, the woman regained consciousness and found herself lying on his lap. She got up immediately and fled in fear.

In shock, she ran towards a car and told the driver that someone was trying to kill her. The woman then made a police report after the driver urged her to do so. 

That night, she was taken to Changi General Hospital and her medical report showed that she suffered a bruise on her knee and complained of pain around her neck, which had patches of rashes.

Cheong surrendered himself to the police when they contacted him that night. 

He was charged on Oct 28, 2020 and remanded at the Institute of Mental Health for psychiatric observation for about two weeks.

The psychiatric report noted that he did not have any major mental illness and that his fetish did not fulfil the criteria of being diagnosed as a disorder. He also has a history of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) but no longer experienced symptoms as an adult.

DPP Tan said: “Since the attack, the victim has been suffering from anxiety and panic attacks.”

In December 2020, the woman visited her family physician, who referred her to a heart specialist.

A report from the specialist stated that she was “troubled by symptoms of numbness and cold sweats, and that these symptoms were mostly anxiety-related (panic reaction)”.

The specialist then referred her to a Traditional Chinese Medication clinic to manage her panic symptoms, DPP Tan said.

Cheong’s lawyer Cory Wong from Invictus Law firm told the court that Cheong did not take her to the staircase landing with the intention to choke her. 

Instead, Cheong decided to choke her only when he pressed the record button on his phone, Mr Wong said.

“Our firm instructions are really that as he was checking each floor of the staircase landing, that was really for the genuine purposes of taking the TikTok video uninterrupted,” he added.

Mr Wong also noted that the prosecution did not have an expert psychiatric report that could be used as evidence to the degree of psychological hurt she suffered or explain why she took more than a month before she saw a doctor for her symptoms.

He said that while there was psychological harm, for which the degree was speculative, the physical harm caused was objectively not serious.

During sentencing, District Judge Lim Wen Juin acknowledged that there was no formal diagnosis for the woman’s psychological suffering but said that he inferred from the facts that she did suffer tangible effects from the attack.

He added that there is a need to grant a higher sentence to deter similar acts that have the potential to cause death.

For voluntarily causing hurt, Cheong could have been jailed up to three years or fined up to S$5,000, or punished with both.