Public Prosecutor v Loh Siang Piow alias Loh Chan Pew

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Marvin Bay
• Judgment Date: 12 March 2021
• Neutral Citation: [2021] SGMC 16
• Court: Magistrates' Court (Singapore)
• Docket Number: Magistrate Arrest Case No 904652 of 2017 & Ors, Magistrate’s Appeals No MA-9695-2020-01
• Year: 2021
• Published date: 16 April 2021
• Hearing Date: 05 July 2018,24 January 2018,16 July 2018,23 July 2018,25 July 2018,17 May 2019,22 January 2018,04 July 2018,25 January 2018,18 February 2020,10 December 2018,11 December 2018,02 July 2018,17 July 2018,22 July 2020,03 June 2020,03 July 2018,15 May 2019,12 December 2018,19 July 2018,18 July 2018,14 December 2018,22 October 2019,16 May 2019,11 March 2020,26 January 2018,14 May 2019,10 July 2019,13 December 2018,23 January 2018
• Plaintiff Counsel: Gail Wong and Rebecca Wong (Attorney-General's Chambers)
• Defendant Counsel: Lew Chen Chen, Victor Lee and Dilys Chua (Chambers Law LLP)
• Subject Matter: Criminal Law,Offences,Outrage of Modesty,Evidence,Alibi defence,Veracity of witnesses,Delayed reporting,'Unusually convincing' standard,Holistic consideration of extrinsic and intrinsic consistency,Criminal Procedure and Sentencing,Sentencing
• Citation: [2021] SGMC 16

District Judge Marvin Bay: INTRODUCTION

This case concerns a prosecution by the State against Loh Siang Piow alias Loh Chan Pew (Mr Loh). Mr Loh is a Singaporean presently aged 75. The Prosecution has proceeded on two charges for sexual offences committed in 2013, while Mr Loh was aged 68. Mr Loh is a figure of note in the local athletics scene, having achieved prominence in track and field events in the Singapore South East Asia Peninsular (SEAP) Games in the seventies. He has also held high office in the Singapore Athletic Association (SAA), and heavily involved himself in coaching duties. Mr Loh had been coaching for 35 years since the early 1980s and had coached an estimated 600 to 700 athletes during this period. At the material time of 2013, Mr Loh was coaching more than 70 trainees.

The accusations against him have come in the course of his activities of his role as a coach. Mr Loh claimed trial to two charges of having committed outrages of modesty contrary to section 354(1) of the Penal Code, Chapter 224 (2008 Rev. Ed.) to a young woman he had undertaken to train (hereinafter referred to as Ms C), in the course of administering massages after training sessions.

The events had occurred in early 2013 at Tampines Stadium, a building which no longer exists. Tampines Stadium has been demolished to make way for the integrated mall and stadium now known as Our Tampines Hub. This has inevitably added a layer of complexity in this case, particularly where area of dispute over salient features of the building could not be conclusively resolved, despite considerable efforts at reconstruction. There is, nevertheless, a substratum of common ground that an equipment room existed under the spectator’s stand of the Stadium, and that there were benches at the corridor under the spectator’s stand. These were the structures where the alleged acts of molestation were committed. There are no independent witnesses who witnessed the incidents, and the case thus fundamentally hinged on the of parsing over the accounts of the putative victim, as against the competing version proffered by Mr Loh. Theses account had to be tested against a factual matrix of circumstantial and documentary evidence, including near contemporary accounts of the incident narrated to Ms W, another trainee (who has maintained a set of accusations against Mr Loh, which are not the subject matter of the proceedings at trial), and Mr A, a confidant of the Accused, to whom Ms C had revealed the acts of molest in what both asserted to be a reciprocal unburdening of issues troubling each person, after Mr A had confessed his angst over his sexual orientation.

The case has also been complicated by the fact that investigations had only begun in 2016, after Ms C lodged the first information report in the afternoon of 30 July 2016 at about 2.15 pm¹, more than three years after the alleged incidents forming the bases of the charges.

The charges

The specifics of the charges (in their final iteration) state: MAC-904652-2017 (First proceeded charge marked “C1”)²

“ (Mr Loh is) charged that (he), on a Sunday between January 2013 and 17 March 2013 between at or around 12 p.m. and at or around 6 p.m. on a bench along the corridor leading to the gate below the spectators’ sitting area of Tampines Stadium located at 25 Tampines Street 82, Singapore, did use criminal force on one (Ms C), a female then aged 18 years old, to wit, by rubbing her vulva region over her clothing with his digit in the course of massaging the back of her thighs, knowing it to be likely that he will thereby outrage her modesty.”

MAC-904653-2017 (Second proceeded charge marked “C2”)³

“(Mr Low is) charged that (he), on or about 15 March 2013 between at or around 12 p.m. and at or around 6 p.m. on a massage bed inside an equipment room under the spectators’ sitting area of Tampines Stadium located at 25 Tampines Street 82, Singapore, did use criminal force on one (Ms C), a female then aged 18 years old, to wit, by rubbing her vulva region over her clothing with his digit in the course of massaging the back of her thighs, knowing it to be likely that he will thereby outrage her modesty.

The parties

Mr Loh has already been introduced, I will now turn to the complainant: Ms C. Ms C had aspired to be a national level athlete, after some success in short-distance sprints, from JC1. In junior college, she had represented Singapore in the SEA Youth Championship 2012, and after her ‘A’ Levels, was referred by her track teacher, Ms Michelle Eng (DW5), to Mr Loh to continue track training and participate in sprint competitions after her exit from junior college. In the course of her track training with Mr Loh, she had met Ms W, an accomplished national level athlete. Outside of the alibi defence, Mr Loh and Ms Eng would be the principal witnesses for the other aspect of the defence case, which was to maintain a proposition that the accounts provided by the two accusers; Ms C and Ms W, were suspect, and they could thus not be regarded as reliable witnesses.

In the proceedings, the prosecution called the following witnesses: PW1- Ms C’s father; “Mr F”. PW 2- Ms C’s mother; “Ms M”. PW-3- The complainant; Ms C. PW4- Ms W; a fellow female trainee to whom Ms C had shared her near-contemporaneous account in 2013. PW5 -Mr A; a friend of Ms C, to whom she had confided in in 2013. PW6- Principal Meteorologist Ang Chieng Hai PW7- SPF W/Sergeant Nur Sahidah Binte Ibrahim-recorder of FIR. PW8- SI Alan Khor Teck Ming-Investigation Officer

As a gag order was in force, the names of some witnesses in these grounds have been replaced by alphabetical abbreviations, which are generally linked by their relationship with the complainant. As a convenient mnemonic to better follow the evidence of these prosecution witnesses in these grounds, the basis for the chosen letters for their anonymised and abbreviated names are as follows:

PW1:	Mr F(ather of Complainant)
PW 2:	Ms M(other of Complainant)
PW 3:	Ms C(omplanant)
PW 4:	Ms W(itness)
PW5:	Mr A(nother witness)

The defence case involved the following: DW1- Loh Siang Piow; the accused person. DW2-Tan Kok Beng Terry; long-term associate of accused and alibi witness. DW3-Katharina Khng Lay Hua- wife of accused person. DW4-Loh Sian Kok-brother of accused person. DW5-Eng Wei Ping Michelle-school coach who referred Ms C to accused. DW6- Oon Kuan Yong- Trainee coached by accused person. DW7-Tan Wei Leong: former coach of Ms C. DW8-Mylvaganam Jayalaxmi; Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (Toa Payoh) (hereinafter abbreviated to “CHIJ (Toa Payoh)”) coach and alibi witness. DW9-Amirah Aljunied; former track and field trainee at CHIJ (Toa Payoh). DW10-Tan Wei Jie, Eugene; former trainee of accused.

The prosecution subsequently called three rebuttal witnesses PW9 Paulin Theboral Solomon; staff member of CHIJ (Toa Payoh) PW10 Chan Chiang, Daryl; staff member of CHIJ (Toa Payoh) PW11 Station Inspector Goh Teck Heng; initial investigation officer. For these grounds, where the terms “DPP” and “counsel” are mentioned, they should be taken to refer to lead DPP; Ms Gail Wong and Ms Lew Chen Chen, respectively.

THE CASE FOR THE PROSECUTION Outline of case (incorporating the account of the complainant: PW3)

The following is an outline on the sequence of events leading to the commission of the alleged acts of outrages of modesty, as related by the prosecution witnesses, principally the complainant, Ms C. This outline is intended to facilitate a grasp of the sequence of events within the factual matrix from the perspective of Ms C and the key prosecution witnesses called to corroborate her account. I have set out the outline in some detail, as to set the scene, and allow for perspective view of the interaction between events and parties involved. Having this established would allow a more granular examination of each witness’ evidence in the later part of these grounds. The events are set off from the narrative point-of-view of the complainant, Ms C. Specific aspects of the evidence of other witnesses which I found significant will be set out and described later in these grounds.

Enrolment into group training programme

At the instance of Michelle Eng, Ms C had embarked into a training programme with the accused which had run a short duration and had been fairly intense from January 2013 to 17 March 2013. Ms C had continued training after starting university, but this had tapered off in intensity. Ms C had her plate full, as she was concurrently involved in an internship from the beginning of January 2013 to 29 April 2013, which had required her to worked weekdays, but would still leave around 4.00 pm to 4.30 pm each day for training. These were group training sessions, which would run almost daily six times a week from Monday to Saturday together with other “private athletes”. These athletes were so dubbed as they were not participating in the coaching as part of any official school training session. For the more formalised school-based training, Mr Loh coached a cadre of school athletes in secondary schools (such a CHIJ (Toa Payoh)), junior colleges such as Catholic Junior College (CJC), and in institutions of higher learning such as Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

For the group training sessions, Mr Loh would assume full control and gave directions on the time and place of training. The training was also eclectic rather than formally structured, as Mr Loh would also only state the workout or training programme that would be performed at the session itself, generally not giving any advance notice of the routine before the session.

Invitation to undergo individual training sessions

It was Ms C’s testimony that Mr Loh proposed to organise one-on-one or individual training sessions for her benefit some two months after she...