In ‘most shocking and horrific’ case, 20-year-old man jailed 22 years for raping, sodomising underage girls

SINGAPORE — Within a span of two years, a young man terrorised 19 underage girls by forcing them to submit to his sexual demands. 

Muhammad Anddy Faizul Mohd Eskah, who turns 21 next month, used lies, blackmail and physical force to get his way. One of his victims even became pregnant.

Anddy pleaded guilty on Friday (June 12) to nine charges of statutory rape, aggravated rape and sexual assault by penetration. Another 59 charges were taken into consideration by the High Court for sentencing.

He was jailed 22 years and given the maximum 24 strokes of the cane. 

All of his victims cannot be named due to court orders to protect their identities. 

Anddy was first arrested in May 2016, after having sexually abused nine victims, but was charged and released on bail three months later. He then continued assaulting more girls.

He also secretly took videos and photographs of his victims, up until his second arrest after an ambush at his Bedok North home in August 2017.

He has been in remand since being nabbed that second time. 

At the time of his offences from April 2015 to August 2017, he was between 15 and 18 years old. He was a student at the Institute of Technical Education when he was first arrested.

‘GOD HELP YOU’

His lawyer Henry Lim, assigned to him through the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme, asked for a reformative training suitability report to be called in light of his age, but Justice Chan Seng Onn said this was out of the question.

“This is one of the most shocking and horrific criminal cases involving sexual offenders that have come before the courts. The accused, though relatively youthful, is a deviant sexual offender who committed a total of 68 offences… (The) victims suffered grievously at his hands,” the judge said.

Justice Chan urged Anddy to seek help and control his sexual urges, telling him he could be released in 15 years on remission if he behaves well in prison.

“If this continues and you revert to your old behaviour, you will be punished much more severely than this… Your whole life will be spent in prison. You should ask yourself if it’s worth it, this sexual spree,” the judge said.

“Otherwise at 36 years old, if you don’t want to change, God help you.”

Anddy underwent three psychiatric assessments at the Institute of Mental Health, and was eventually diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder with an “imminent and serious risk of sexual reoffending”. 

His ex-girlfriend told one of the psychiatrists that he pestered and scared female friends into having sex, then secretly filmed these sexual acts and threatened to show the videos to others.

His use of deception, threats, lies and impersonation are generally seen in people with psychopathy, another psychiatrist said in his report.

Anddy had also shown little remorse for his actions, justifying them based on his own needs, a third psychiatrist wrote.

SWITCHED STRATEGY TO LURE MORE VICTIMS

Initially, he met most of his victims on Facebook or WhatsApp. He would then get compromising photographs and videos of them and use these to blackmail the girls into having sex with him.

The court heard that he was first investigated in 2015 for sexual offences against two girls, one of whom got pregnant and gave birth.

He then went on the run and more police reports were filed against him.

By the time he was arrested on May 9, 2016, he had sexually abused at least nine victims.

After being released on bail in August that year, he switched his modus operandi. He began approaching victims online by pretending to be a law student, saying he was a middleman, looking to recruit them as highly paid social escorts for wealthy clients.

He would then meet them under the pretext of being a paying customer, then assault them. He also secretly took videos and photos of the acts on some of these occasions.

DON'T MIND GOING TO JAIL

Among the many girls he victimised was a girl with mild intellectual disability, who accepted his offer over Facebook for a job to be a salesgirl. He asked her to go to his flat to take photos, while secretly intending to sexually exploit her.

When she arrived, he told her to sit in compromising positions at a stairway and when she refused, he pushed her to the ground and sodomised her. After she said she would make a police report and refused to delete their text conversations from her phone, he sodomised her again. She later told her mother about the sexual assault.

Another victim, aged 13 at the time, initially refused to entertain his many Facebook messages. But after a quarrel with her boyfriend, she talked to him and he seized the chance to manipulate her, asking for nude photos in exchange for not spreading rumours about the nature of the quarrel.

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Eunice Lau said that he also told the girl he did not mind being in prison for circulating nude photos, saying that he would probably only get a “light sentence”.

He eventually persuaded her to go to his flat, where he raped her twice then stole S$110 from her wallet.

In mid-2015, he tricked another girl into sending him nude photos by telling her he needed them for a school project. 

He later raped her twice at a multi-storey car park and on another day, raped her twice more in a department store fitting room. 

He lured yet another rape victim, aged 17, while out on bail. He pretended to be a wealthy man who needed a social escort, but even after she told him she was not willing to give him sexual services, he forced himself on her.

He also got her to transfer S$500 to him as “bank fee” so that he could release her cash payment of S$3,000 to her. 

When Anddy was first arrested, he denied using coercive means but ultimately conceded that he used videos, photos and sensitive personal information as leverage.

DPP Lau told the court that when he was arrested the second time, it was found that he persistently committed crimes because of the “lack of any punitive or legal consequences to his myriad offences”.

His lawyer Mr Lim said in mitigation that Anddy was “maladjusted” with no proper guidance or mentorship from his family. 

The lawyer added that both Anddy’s stepfather and biological father are serving time in prison for long-term drug offences.