Man jailed 3 years for sex with 11-year-old girl

SINGAPORE — He was in a five-year relationship with his girlfriend when he got to know a young girl through a mobile messaging service.

The girl, who was 11 but claimed she was 17, met up with him three times between April and July 2016, and had sex with him on two of these occasions.

For sex with an underage person, Singaporean Li Jixian, 25, was jailed three years on Thursday (Nov 22).

He pleaded guilty to two charges of sexual penetration of a minor, and three other charges were taken into consideration during his sentencing.

The court heard that the Vietnamese girl lives here with her mother, a divorcee. Now 13 years old, the girl cannot be named due to a court order.

On how the two hooked up, court documents stated that Li used the WeChat application’s “people nearby” function to send random greetings to the app’s users in the vicinity one day. He received a response from the girl and they started chatting from there, leading to video calls to each other later.

TODAY understands that the girl has a personal website where she posts racy photographs of herself.

Li’s lawyer, Mr Henry Lim, revealed in his mitigation plea that the girl had two WeChat accounts, each with a different name. She stated her age as 16 and 17 on the two accounts.

The prosecution argued that the onus is on Li as an adult to check the girl’s age before having sex with her, but he relied solely on what the girl told him and failed to verify her age.

Mr Lim told the court that the girl had initiated meeting Li at a shelter beside a playground in the public housing estate where she lived.

Things got physical in that first meeting. After that, they continued to keep in contact through WeChat and agreed to meet up two months later in June 2016 at the same shelter.

This time, Li led the girl to an area behind a bin centre and had sex with her without a condom. The girl wanted to take a photograph of him, but he turned her down.

They met again one month later and headed to a staircase landing to have sex. He also did not use a condom.

It is not known how the victim’s mother got to know of their encounters, but she was the one who made a police report in August 2016, stating that her daughter was “raped” by a man in the second week of June that year.

Li, who is a car dealer, got married to his longtime girlfriend this year. His lawyer told the court that his wife had deeply considered his misconduct and had forgiven him.

Mr Lim, who had sought a jail term of less than three years for his client, noted that Li is “truly remorseful” and “deeply sorry” that he had caused distress and embarrassment not only to the victim and her family but to his family and wife.

“He knows he has to face the consequence of his absolute stupidity,” Mr Lim added.

Li asked for a deferment of his sentence and this was granted on Thursday by District Judge Kessler Soh. He will begin serving his jail term on Jan 4 next year. Li said that he just got a Housing and Development Board (HDB) flat and wants to continue working until he gets his year-end bonus to partly finance his new home.

For each charge of sexually penetrating a minor, Li could have been jailed up to 20 years and fined or caned.