SINGAPORE: A female teacher in Singapore who had sex with a 15-year-old student was jailed for 10 months Monday, a court spokesman said.
The woman's identity has been withheld to protect the victim, said the spokesman, who confirmed that District Judge Sarjit Singh handed down the sentence, but gave no further details.
Now unemployed, the 32-year-old woman earlier pleaded guilty to having sex with a minor under the age of 16.
The friendship between the teacher and boy began when he was a 14-year-old Grade Six pupil and joined an overseas school trip which she led, a report said.
They later had sex, when he was 15, after the boy said he loved the woman who had declared him her godson, it said. By then, the boy had moved on to a secondary school.
They had sex five more times but when she tried to end the affair the boy threatened to kill her, leading her to contact police, the report continued.
The report added that Judge Singh said the case involved a serious breach of trust.
The woman could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined.
She wept as she was led away to serve her sentence, 938Live radio reported.
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Now, before I say anything, I'd like to clarify that both of them were a bit koo koo (bonkers) for even having a relationship like this. I know single adults in Singapore have a serious problem finding loved ones nowadays (I'll write about this some other time), but this is a bit extreme.
However, wasn't the sentence passed by the judge flawed in this context? Doesn't it seem unjust for the woman? Here are my viewpoints on the matter.
1. I know the woman had sexual relations with the boy. But is that "Rape" in Statutory Rape? The boy gave his consent. He told her he loved her. And don't give me the argument that the boy didn't know what he was doing. Please, at that time, he was 14, not 5 years old. Hormones may be influencing him, but he was already rational at that time.
The woman must have been sick, but to punish her for "rape" seems off. She didn't force him to have sex. It just happened that the person she had sex with was not of "legal age". If she was below legal age, she wouldn't be charged with this "crime".
It seems like the law was enacted for the sake of ONLY following the law, and not to uphold the values it's trying to protect. She gets jailed because of a legality, and not really a corruption of moral values they've put in place.
2. Why wasn't the boy punished? He threatened to kill the woman! That was the reason why she went to the authorities in the first place. The boy was the one who had evil thoughts and had the intention of committing a crime. Why he gets to roam free I will never know.
Laws are made to uphold the values that we've all agreed that we should live by to have peace and order in society. Laws are made by the people for the people, and so the law has to be always put into context in any given situation. Otherwise, it becomes too rigid and won't make sense, like the case of the woman.
In the end, I end with a learning I've heard long ago. Laws are made by the people, for the people. We should live by the laws we've put in place, but we also have to be ready to change / mold them when they deem not applicable anymore.
layman
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