The Straits Times -
4 Mar 08
A young man paid
S$850 to have sex with a 15-year old girl he got to know on the
Internet.
On 3 Mar 08, Chen
Wei Jian, 22, was poorer by S$7,000 – the amount he was fined after
pleading guilty to having sex with a girl under the age of 16 last
May.
A district court
heard that sometime in the beginning of May, the two were surfing
the Internet when they chatted on MSN and exchanged phone
numbers.
About two weeks
later, she sent him an SMS message. In
a subsequent phone call, she revealed her age and the school she
was studying in.
Chen, then 21, told
her he was 20 and was working in a logistic
company.
Later that month, he
invited her to his home to have sex after agreeing to her request
to pay her S$850.
The girl went to
Chen’s home and they had consensual sex in a bedroom. He paid her the money.
The crime came to
light only when the girl quarrelled with her boyfriend on 21 May
and told him she was seeing Chen and that he had raped
her.
The boyfriend them
told the girls mother and they called Chen to meet
them.
When Chen arrived at
Hougang Green with a friend, the girl’s boyfriend identified
himself and called the police. Chen was
then arrested.
A second similar
charge of having sex with the victim in mid-May at a hotel was
taken into consideration.
Chen, who pleaded
for leniency, could have been jailed for up to five years and fined
up to S$10,000 for the offence.
