To those who knew him, Kuang Liang Yong was a married secondary school teacher with two young children.
But behind that respectable facade lurked a sexual predator who set out to snare naive young girls.
He took on different personas and spun a web of lies to flatter them or gain their sympathy so that he could sexually exploit them.
And he was patient and persistent.
To manipulate a 13-year-old girl into sending him 57 nude photos and videos of herself, he kept in touch with her for almost two years while pretending to be an accident victim with erectile dysfunction.
When he later turned his sights on a Primary 6 schoolgirl, who was his daughter’s schoolmate, he pretended to be a boy the same age as her.
He never met his two victims, relying only on text messages to communicate with them.
Kuang’s devious deeds came to light when the second girl’s father made a police report after finding out about his text messages to her.
His mobile phone was later found to contain evidence that incriminated him over the sexual exploitation of his first victim.
Yesterday, Kuang, 47, was jailed for 22 months after he pleaded guilty last month to three charges of getting a minor to commit an indecent act under the Children And Young Persons Act, and one count under the Protection From Harassment Act.
Kuang, who resigned from his teaching post at Admiralty Secondary School after his arrest, was also fined $500 for disorderly behaviour towards a police officer at his home.
ADORABLE
Court papers said Kuang met his first victim, who cannot be named because of a gag order, in early 2012 while he was with his wife and two children at Sun Plaza shopping centre in Sembawang.
After overhearing her tell the counter staff she had lost her mobile phone, Kuang approached her to offer his phone so she could call hers.
But his true intention was to get her phone number.
After his arrest, he told the authorities that he found her adorable and had taken a liking to her, despite knowing that she was only 13.
Between February 2012 and December 2013, Kuang communicated with her via WhatsApp using the moniker “Sean Romeo”.
The chat log between them was so long that it totalled more than 400 pages, the court heard.
When he first contacted her, he lied that he had got her number and name from her friends, and claimed he was interested in her.
He would chat with her about sex, telling her things like: “I want you to make love with me, forever…”
While she said she had not even kissed a boy and intended to remain a virgin until marriage, Kuang suggested that she do sexually explicit acts, such as send him nude photos or videos of herself in the shower.
In August 2012, he lied that a road accident had left him with erectile dysfunction and depression.
He peppered her with messages – often lengthy ones – and their conversations grew more explicit. (See report, below, for some of his less explicit messages.)
At some point, he told the girl that a doctor said he needed to look at photographs of young girls – particularly aged 12 to 16 – regularly to recover from his erectile dysfunction.
She finally relented and sent him 57 nude photographs of herself and videos of her doing sexual acts, despite being uncomfortable while doing so.
In return, he told her that he considered her his girlfriend and wife from the day she started sending him these obscene materials.
In time, she became frustrated because she knew nothing about him.
JAILED: Kuang Liang Yong was sentenced to 22 months’ jail. PHOTO: THE STRAITS TIMES
She even visited the address where “Sean Romeo” lived, only to be told there was no such person.
Distressed and heartbroken, she contacted Kuang and threatened to cut herself with penknives.
The last time Kuang contacted her was on Christmas Day in 2013, when he asked her for the phone numbers of three of her female friends.
She refused, and Kuang stopped texting her, even though she sporadically messaged him to tell him that she missed him and hoped to speak to him again.
Two years later, his lust had found a new target, which would prove to be his downfall. (See report, right.)
NEIGHBOUR
When The New Paper went to his Admiralty Drive HDB flat yesterday afternoon, no one answered the door.
A neighbour, who declined to be named, said: “He’s always very friendly, very polite… He seemed an okay person. Every time I see him with his wife and two children, they were very nice to everyone.”
She said Kuang told her he had stopped teaching, citing health issues, about two months ago.
“I’m just shocked,” she said.
– Additional reporting by Joseph Lee
