‘Severely limited’ options in sentencing intellectually disabled offenders: High Court in teen rapist case

SINGAPORE — While criminal laws here provide for offenders of unsound mind, there are no provisions for the intellectually disabled who are not of unsound mind, a High Court judge said.

Last month, he lamented the "severely limited" options available while sentencing a teen rapist to reformative training.

For crimes with a minimum jail term, the court has no discretion to reduce the term on account of the offender's intellectual disability, Justice Woo Bih Li wrote in his grounds of decision for the case, which was made public on Wednesday (April 25).

The court also lacks discretion to reduce the number of strokes of the cane for such offenders, where a minimum number is specified by the law.

While men above the age of 50 and women are spared caning, there is no exception for people with intellectual disability, Justice Woo noted.

Prosecutors, who are appealing the decision, had pushed for 15 to 18 years' jail and at least 15 strokes of the cane for the 17-year-old, who was 14 when he committed the crimes in November 2014.

The teen, who was not named, has an IQ of 61 and scored 43 in his Primary School Leaving Examination.

He was studying at Assumption Pathway School in Upper Bukit Timah, which offers a special curriculum for students who cannot get into mainstream schools.

The victim, a 16-year-old girl, is also intellectually disabled and from the same school.

While out in Bukit Panjang on Nov 21, 2014, the boy spotted his victim at a traffic light junction, tailed her to a housing block where she lived, followed her as she was reaching her home, and sexually assaulted and raped her along a corridor.

He pleaded guilty to aggravated rape and two charges of sexual assault by penetration. Six other charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.

REFORMATIVE TRAINING VS JAIL TIME

Justice Woo explained why he sentenced the teen to reformative training even after a prison psychiatrist said that there was a 75 to 80 per cent chance he would not benefit from the regime, which requires "a certain level of cognitive functioning".

Such training applies to offenders below 21 and lasts between 18 months and three years.

Even if the teen is sentenced to 18 years' jail, as the prosecution proposed, "what would become of (him) and of those around him when he is subsequently released in his early 30s? Would society be better protected when (he) is released from incarceration, stronger and bigger, but lacking insight into the consequences that his choices and conduct carry?", Justice Woo questioned.

"It was for this reason that I considered rehabilitation important, not as an extravagant ideal but rather a practical longer-term solution to the issues that would inevitably confront the accused and implicate the broader society," he explained.

A prison official had testified that reformative training officers would try to help those with intellectual disabilities, although there were time and resource constraints.

The case raises a more fundamental issue of the limited sentencing options for such offenders, Justice Woo said.

The defence's expert, Dr Bosco Lee, had testified that the teen should ideally be warded in a mental institution with special treatment programmes and facilities.

Another expert, veteran child psychiatrist Cai Yiming, had said it was important to keep him safely in a structured environment and focus on helping him overcome disability in a way he could understand.

Dr Cai suggested an "RTC plus" system where an offender could spend three years at the Reformative Training Centre, and a few more years after that undergoing counselling, learning to reject negative peer influence and doing vocational training.

The law provides for supervision of up to a year, for offenders sentenced to reformative training for the maximum three years, Justice Woo noted.

Dr Cai doubted whether reformative training would be able to rehabilitate the teen.

When informed that a jail term would come with caning, Dr Cai asked if the caning could be modified, the judge wrote.

"The question arises as to whether reformative training should remain available to young persons with intellectual disabilities. If not, why not, and what other options should then be put in place," Justice Woo added.

"In my view, it cannot be right that a young offender with intellectual disability is to be sentenced, by default, as if he was an adult because of his intellectual disability."

Reformative training has been imposed before on young sex offenders. The Singapore Prison Service prepares reports to determine the suitability of such training for offenders. Out of 830 reports done from Jan 1, 2015 to Nov 20, 2017, 11 offenders including the teenager were convicted of offences of rape, sexual assault by penetration and/or outrage of modesty. Nine, excluding the teen, were sentenced to reformative training.

Among the 830 reports, there were 19 offenders who had sub-normal IQ, of whom eight were assessed to be likely to benefit from reformative training and three were given the sentence.

Since his arrest, the teen has been placed at the Singapore Boys' Home and was assessed to be well-behaved. This suggests he was "not as irredeemable as one might have assumed", Justice Woo said.