An airforce engineer who molested two teenage girls in a bus and in a Housing Board lift was jailed for eight months on Tuesday.
Andrew Teng Ye Feng, 26, had admitted to brushing against a 13-year-old’s buttocks inside a lift in Woodlands on Sept 14 last year, and touching an 18-year-old’s breast on a double-decker bus on Sept 8.
A court heard that Teng saw the 13-year-old student at a bus stop that day and decided to follow her.
He went into the lift as the victim and two women.
After the two women got out, he stood behind the victim and committed the offence.
The victim also saw him trying to pull down his pants from the reflection in the glass door of the lift.
Feeling uncomfortable, she moved towards the door of the lift, and frantically pressed the lift buttons to open the lift door.
She exited on the 12th floor and ran to her aunt’s house. She then related the incident to her mother over the phone. The mother made a police report.
On Sept 4, Teng and the 18-year-old student boarded SBS Transit Service No 143 at Jurong East Bus Interchange.
She went to the upper deck and sat at the window seat at the second last row while he sat behind her.
When the bus was travelling along West Coast Road that evening, she felt someone touching her breast, but did not pay much attention. She thought her bag had bumped into her left breast.
Teng did it again as she had not reacted to his touch the first time. She immediately turned around and saw his hand resting on the window ledge .
Outraged, she said to him: “Excuse me?”
Teng quickly moved his hand away.
Investigation showed on both occasions when he touched her, Teng had used his bag to shield his hand from the closed-circuit television camera overhead.
His lawyer, Mr Lee Ah Fong, said Teng has been suspended from work since October last year . Mr Lee said Teng committed the offences out of “mischief”, could not understand his own bizarre actions, and had sought psychiatric and psychotherapy treatment.
The maximum punishment for molestation is two years’ jail, fine and caning. For outraging the modesty of a girl under 14, Teng could have been jailed for up to five years, fined, caned or given a combination of these penalties.
Source: www.straitstimes.com
