A graduate student from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) was arrested today for outrage of modesty after a teenager reported that the NTU student had molested him under the guise of conducting a research project.
The unnamed victim told RICE Media that he had been lured to join the 25-year-old NTU student’s “project” after he chanced upon an online advertisement the suspect put up, calling on males under the age of 24 “to assist in research project regarding body stimulation in forms of light sensation touches”.
The online advertisement promised participants hourly remuneration and offered up to $25++ per hour, with an additional $10 per session for students aged 16 and below.
The victim revealed that the incident occurred in the evening of 13 Nov last year when he met the Singaporean student at the lobby of an NTU graduate hall.
Instead of going to a laboratory as the teen had initially believed given the description of the project, the 17-year-old was led to the student’s dormitory room where he was blindfolded and restrained to a bed while naked before being ticked for an hour.
The teen revealed that the student then began stimulating his gentials with a vibrating device – something which the teenager had not agreed to. The student then allegedly tried to give the teen a handjob, claiming that the teen was not “reactive” enough, before paying the teen $55 to masturbate in front of him.
The Singaporean victim complied and claims that he was afraid to protest, since the suspect was “a big guy.” He filed a police report against the suspect the very next day.
NTU said that there was no such research project and added that it is working with the police. A spokesman for the school told reporters:
“The University views academic and research misconduct as serious disciplinary offences. All research proposals must be approved by the University before they can be carried out. There is no such scientific or scholarly research project that has been undertaken.
“Any research involving human participants must be submitted to the Institutional Review Board for review and approval.”
The suspect denied any involvement with the research project or the advertisements when contacted by NTU campus paper, The Nanyang Chronicle. Before he was arrested, the suspect claimed that his contact information was listed in the Craigslist and Gumtree advertisements without his authorisation or knowledge.
The victim told RICE Media that he is speaking out about the incident to warn others from falling prey to such “projects”. He added:
“I should have said no, I should have said something else … but,  the whole entire thing is wrong. There should be no such thing, there should be papers to sign, it shouldn’t be carried out in the dorm room with restraints on the bed or a blindfold.”