Man gets 20 years' jail, caning for sexually assaulting 11-year-old girl he met through Instagram

SINGAPORE — After befriending a primary school student through social media platform Instagram, Muhammad Hisham Abdul Karim engaged in sex acts with the 11-year-old and even offered her methamphetamine.

His actions came to light three years later when she confided in a case worker about what had happened.

For what a High Court judge described as “premeditated and deviously planned” offences, Hisham, now aged 34, was sentenced on Monday (Sept 5) to 20 years’ jail and the maximum 24 strokes of the cane.

The Singaporean pleaded guilty to four charges of sexual assault by penetration of a minor.

Another 11 similar charges, including drug consumption and attempting to procure indecent acts from six other minors, were taken into consideration for sentencing.

The victim and the primary school she attended cannot be named due to a gag order to protect her identity.

This was not Hisham’s first brush with the law, having been jailed 10 months in 2016 for sexually penetrating a 15-year-old girl.

The court heard that the following year, Hisham found the girl’s publicly accessible Instagram page.

She made reference to her school in her Instagram bio, which is a description of someone’s account that sits at the top of a profile page. She also posted photographs of herself wearing her school jersey.

Hisham sent her a friend request and they began chatting after she accepted the request.

The girl also noticed that he had followed several of her primary school friends and interacted with their posts, such as by liking them.

Hisham and the girl continued communicating over Instagram and WhatsApp and she agreed to meet him in person at his request.

Deputy Public Prosecutors (DPP) Regina Lim and Keith Jieren Thirumaran told the court that the girl also agreed when Hisham indicated an interest to be sexually intimate.

They further noted that she was incapable of giving consent at her age.

DIDN'T HAVE SEX FOR FEAR OF IMPREGNATING HER

On one occasion, they engaged in sex acts at a staircase landing of a public housing block.

She was curious about sex and asked to have intercourse with him, but he did not want to get her pregnant. She then performed a sex act on him before he sodomised her.

On another occasion, Hisham picked the girl up on his motorcycle and they rode to an open-air car park in the vicinity of Woodlands. He then got her to board a covered lorry that belonged to his employer and left the door slightly ajar.

They chatted at the back of the lorry for a while before he offered her methamphetamine, also known as Ice.

The girl smoked the controlled drug before returning the drug utensils to Hisham for him to smoke the drug, too. He then undressed himself and the victim.

When he turned down her requests to have intercourse, they engaged in sex acts before he sodomised her for several minutes. 

Around November 2017, their relationship soured and they stopped meeting and exchanging text messages.

In early 2020, the girl was having a session with her case worker when she revealed that she had had sex with Hisham three years ago. On the same day, a Ministry of Social and Family Development employee lodged a police report.

Hisham was arrested on Jan 16, 2020. His sentence was backdated to then.

SELECTIVE AMNESIA

High Court judge Mavis Chionh highlighted that an Institute of Mental Health (IMH) report said that Hisham met the criteria for paedophilic disorder and has a moderate risk of reoffending.

The IMH psychiatrist also wrote that Hisham had claimed he did not recall his actions, but the psychiatrist said that this was “selective amnesia borne of an attempt to minimise his criminal activity for the offences”.

Justice Chionh also told the court that Hisham’s previous jail sentence “did not teach him anything, certainly neither contrition nor self-restraint”.

Aside from assaulting the victim, he had reached out to six girls aged 10 to 12 from 2018 to 2019, asking if they wanted to have sex with him.

The judge said that Hisham had also exposed the victim, who is now 16, to the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, especially because he confessed to frequenting commercial sex workers from 2013 to 2018.

Justice Chionh also ruled that the 16-year jail term sought by the prosecution was not enough, and said that 20 years' jail was more proportionate to his offences. 

For each offence of sexual assault by penetration of a minor, Hisham could have been jailed for up to 20 years and fined or caned.