SINGAPORE: A young man was sentenced to three weeks in prison this week after he was caught masturbating while watching girls practice ballet at a local dance school.
27-year-old Cavell Chua Ke Qin pleaded guilty to one charge of committing an indecent act in public. He also had two other similar charges taken into consideration in sentencing.
He was first seen behaving suspiciously on 22 July 2021, around 8.30 pm in an urban dance studio, where he often went to watch young women practice ballet while masturbating. The court has ordered that the name and address of the studio, which teaches ballet to students aged two and above, be kept confidential to protect the identity of the victim.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Quek Lu Yi told the court that a 17-year-old student from the dance school was waiting for her father when she saw Chua masturbating and touching his private parts through his pants several times. The girl left the scene after her father arrived.
A staff member of the dance studio later reported an “unidentified Chinese man” engaging in obscene acts to the manager on 26 August, and the police received a report on August 31. The police identified the accused based on CCTV footage.
During questioning, Chua admitted to masturbating in the dance studio once or twice a week for the past year.
The prosecutor argued that Chua committed the crime near a ballet school where most of the students were teenagers, and asked the court to sentence him to prison for three to five weeks. The defence stated that the defendant had borderline intellectual functioning problems and had confessed to his actions from the start.
While Judge Marvin Bay considered Chua’s remorse for his actions, slight mental handicap, and frustration of not having a girlfriend, he noted that Chua had committed the crime for almost a year in an area with many children and teenagers, as he sentenced him to three weeks in jail. /TISG