A 31-year old engineer, Yap Weng Wah, was sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment and 24 strokes of the cane in respect of multiple sexual offences involving 31 male victims between 11 and 15 years old.
The Prosecution had requested for a minimum of 30 years imprisonment and 24 strokes of cane to be imposed in this case.
Yap carried out the offences in various locations including his rental flat, hotel rooms, shopping centre toilets or swimming pools and he had either sodomised or performed oral sex with all but one of his victims.
During a search conducted on Yap’s house in Yishun, Police found more than 2,000 carefully-indexed and compiled videos of him carrying out the sexual assaults on the young victims victims and the videos.
According to investigations, Yap primarily pretended to be an 18-year old polytechnic student to befriend the victims online before taking several weeks to months to gain their trust by projecting himself as an older brother or mentor.
Over a 3-year period from 2009 to 2012, he persuaded the 30 boys to agree to have anal or oral sex with him.
Using his mobile phone to record the sex acts, Yap had promised the boys that he would delete the footage but instead kept the videos and masturbated to them.
Yap was diagnosed to have hebephilia (which involves a sexual preference for early adolescent children 11 to 14 years old) by the Institute of Mental health.
More information on the case may be found here.