Two men convicted of sexually assaulting woman in hotel; judge rejects consensual sex defence

CNA

4 days ago

SINGAPORE: Two men have been convicted of raping or sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel room, with the judge rejecting their argument that the sex had been consensual.
The first man, 50, was an ex-colleague of the victim. He was convicted of one charge each of molestation, sexual assault and obstructing justice.
The second man, 51, had been friends with the first accused for about 20 years and they had previously engaged in a threesome together. He was convicted of six charges including rape, sexual assault, possessing an intimate image and obstructing justice.
The pair, both foreign nationals, cannot be named due to a gag order by the court preventing the publication of key information including their professions, nationalities and other details that might identify the victim.
The woman had passed out after drinking with the two men, both veterans in her industry, on Feb 26, 2023. This was after the ex-colleague invited her to his hotel room ahead of a planned dinner that never happened.
THE WOMAN'S ACCOUNT
The woman testified that she had agreed to go up to the hotel room to drop off some sparkling water her ex-colleague had asked her to buy.
She also saw it as a networking opportunity. When she got there, she was offered alcohol and drank it while having casual conversation such as chatting about hawker places in Singapore.
She said she was asked to drink her glass of gin mix in a "bottoms up" fashion to catch up since the two men had already been drinking all afternoon.
When she did so, the older man told her: "When you bottom up, if you don't look the person into the eye, you'll have seven years' bad sex."
The woman testified about feeling surprised at this as it was the first time she heard such a thing. She described feeling uncomfortable when the discussion turned sexual and she was asked intimate questions about her boyfriends past and present.
She said she did not leave the room as she thought it would be impolite, and did not see any risk of harm as she had a prior professional and amicable relationship with one of them.
As the drinking went on, her ex-colleague said the restaurant they had booked for dinner had probably given the reserved table away. She said they could go elsewhere but preferred to go to the original eatery.
Around this time, the woman said the men asked her "white wine or red wine?" before plying her with alcohol.
After this, her hands started shaking from the amount of alcohol she had consumed and she vomited on the bed before losing consciousness. She began drifting in and out of consciousness and this was her last clear memory.
She next remembered vomiting into the sink before sexual acts occurred. She recalled saying "no, no, no" many times but could not move or open her eyes.
When she woke up at about 7.45am on Feb 27, 2023, she found blood stains on her underwear and felt weird, suspecting she had been raped. She went to a hospital to get herself medically checked and the hospital later lodged a police report.
The prosecution had argued at trial that the two men sexually assaulted the victim knowing full well that she did not consent.
The older man took a photo of the woman while she was naked, and without her knowledge, and the two men conspired to obstruct justice by deleting incriminating messages, said the prosecution.
The men had admitted to the sexual acts in video-recorded interview statements to the police, and forensic evidence supports the victim's account, said the prosecutors.
They added that the men had offered no explanation why the woman would otherwise have accused them of rape.
JUDGE ACCEPTS VICTIM'S ACCOUNT
The men contested the charges, but Justice Hoo Sheau Peng found that the prosecution had proved its case, in a judgment released on Tuesday (Jul 22).
She found the victim firm in her evidence, providing a textured narration of events and not attempting to embellish evidence for bits she found "patchy".
Justice Hoo agreed with the prosecution that the woman's conduct at the time was consistent with her account.
First, after fully regaining consciousness and forming the view that she had been raped, the victim checked the bin for condoms and repeatedly asked one of the men what had happened.
When she returned to the hotel room, she searched online for what to do if she had been raped, the legal consequences of rape, as well as the police's phone number in Singapore.
She also visited the hospital once she could to make sure her body was "alright" and made a conscious effort not to wash up in order to preserve evidence.
She also tried arranging to meet her ex-colleague to hear his explanation of the night's events.
Justice Hoo said the woman's actions all cohere logically with her account of the events, and this is significant as it strikes at the defence's arguments that the woman's account was reconstructed and not based on her recollection.
The woman's evidence also cohered with other evidence such as the statements of the two men, closed-circuit television footage from the hotel and the woman's medical examination.
MEN'S ACCOUNTS "INCREDIBLE": JUDGE
In contrast, Justice Hoo found the ex-colleague's account of the sexual activities "incredible". The man had said that not a single word was uttered by any of them throughout the long series of acts, despite saying earlier that the trio had engaged in a "hearty and long conversation".
Justice Hoo also found the deleted texts the ex-colleague had sent to his accomplice an indication of his guilt.
She found that the accomplice had shown himself "not to be a credible witness", saying his account of events in a few instances "was simply beyond belief".
After the incident, the ex-colleague made Google searches on his laptop for prompts including "do fingers in (vagina) leave dna", "what leaves dna in vagina after sexual activity" and "does shower after sex reduce dna testing".
The accomplice had also performed searches online after the incident, such as "trick questions in rape cases" and "polygraph test tips", and visited a webpage titled "Interview Strategies for Sexual Assault and Rape Investigations".
"These online searches betray the accused persons' guilty minds," said the judge, adding this was further evidenced by their "incredible explanations for the searches".
The victim's ex-colleague was represented by a team from Withers KhattarWong led by Mr Chenthil Kumarasingam, who argued that the acts had occurred with the victim's consent, or that the man was mistaken as to the consent.
Mr Kumarasingam had argued that if the woman felt uncomfortable when the conversation turned sexual, she would have said so or left the room.
Justice Hoo said this ignores the seniority of the two men in the profession in relation to the victim. It also ignores the fact that her ex-colleague was formerly her superior, and that she respected him and treated him as an elder member in a family.
The older man was defended by Mr Eugene Thuraisingam and Mr Johannes Hadi. Mr Thuraisingam argued that the victim was not unconscious during the sex acts. Instead, she was conscious and consented to the acts, but could not remember doing so due to partial alcohol-induced memory loss.
Both men's defence teams argued that the woman had forgotten about the consent she had given to the sexual acts due to the alcohol she had consumed.
Justice Hoo rejected this, finding the victim to be an unusually convincing witness, and that there was clearly no valid consent on her part to any sexual activity.
She also rejected the men's respective accounts of the events surrounding the sex. She said the accounts were "replete with issues" and that the men had failed to show that the woman validly consented to, or appeared to have consented to the acts.
There was no valid consent, or possible appearance of consent, to the sexual activities, she concluded.
The men will be sentenced at a later date.