A 63-YEAR-OLD rag and bone man who molested a 12-year-old boy on
two consecutive nights was sentenced to 12 years' preventive
detention on Friday.
This is not the first time Mohamed Sa'ad Ismail has been packed
off to jail for sexual offences.
He was convicted of rape in 1975, and in 1999, sentenced to
seven years' preventive detention for outraging the modesty of a
14-year-old scout. Preventive detention, which is up to 20 years,
is meant for hard core offenders with no remission for good
behaviour.
Describing Sa'ad as a menace to society, Deputy Public
Prosecutor Sanjiv Vaswani said in his 35 years of criminal career,
Sa'ad had eight convictions. More than 25 years of these were spent
behind bars and he suffered 23 strokes of the cane. He had offended
yet again, some three years after being released.
In the latest offences on Jan 14 and 15, he had lured the
victim, who came from an unstable home environment, with money for
food and LAN gaming, rides in his trishaw, and visit to a music
studio.
While he was lying beside the victim on those two nights, he
told the victim to remove his clothes before molesting him After
each occasion, he gave him $10.
-- ST