By Dorcas Ting
KUCHING, Jul 20: A young man was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment by the Sessions Court here today for raping an underage girl and circulating an explicit video of the assault through school social media channels, nearly three years after the offences were committed.
Judge Noorhisham Mohd Jaafar delivered the sentence once the Social Welfare Department had completed its social assessment report on the 20-year-old defendant.
He had previously entered guilty pleas to three counts under Section 376(1) of Malaysia’s Penal Code, an offence that carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence, as well as possible whipping, upon conviction.
The three charges relate to the sexual assault of the 13-year-old victim twice in a thick bush and once inside a small hut. These acts were committed across two villages in Serian between June and October 2023.
Judge Noorhisham ruled that this latest sentence will run concurrently with the five-year jail term already imposed on the accused on May 18 this year.
The full scope of the crimes only emerged on August 23, 2024, when the victim’s uncle alerted her father to an explicit video circulating widely. The footage showed his then 13-year-old daughter with the accused, who was 18 at the time and her former boyfriend.
The accused had shared the clip with school and peer group chats on WhatsApp and Telegram. The widespread sharing left the victim deeply distressed, to the point that she refused to attend classes.
Investigators also found the man had repeatedly turned up at the victim’s home to harass her while her father was out at work. Deeply troubled by the public shame and the harm to his daughter, the father filed a police report.
Officers arrested the accused the following day, August 24, at a fruit farm in a Serian village, and seized the smartphone used to record and share the footage.
While the pair had dated since April 2023, when they attended the same school, enquiries confirmed the accused had unprotected sex with the minor without lawful consent and filmed these encounters on his phone at three separate locations and times.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Adriana Maisarah Mohd Farid led the prosecution, while the accused was represented by counsel Moh Ung Kieng from the National Legal Aid Foundation. — DayakDaily
