Man jailed for commercial sex with underage prostitute

A former Singapore Land Authority (SLA) executive who paid an underage prostitute $100 for sex was jailed for nine months on Tuesday.

Kum Ching Tiong, 57, slept with the 16-year-old Vietnamese girl at a Geylang hotel even though he harboured suspicions about her age, the court heard.

The father of two started chatting to the teenager at a pub in Joo Chiat in July last year. When she told him she was 20, he did not believe her and asked to see her passport. She refused.

Yet, he still swopped numbers with the girl after she quoted him $100 for 'short-time sex'. She later called him and they ended up at Meng Yew Hotel.

Kum - who quit recently as a land and estate executive with the SLA - pleaded guilty to having commercial sex with the 16-year-old.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Fu Qijing said the onus was on grown men to exercise caution and check the age of their sexual partners.

He said Kum must have suspected the girl was below 18 when she refused to show him her passport. He added that the former executive had been going to pubs in Joo Chiat with his friends since 2009 and was often accompanied by Vietnamese hostesses.

Kum's lawyer Teo Choo Kee said his client was going through a messy divorce at the time and deeply regretted his mistake. He said he was not a sexual predator and had lost his family and his job.

Kum could have been jailed for up to seven years and fined.

The girl came here to work as a prostitute in September 2010 after her cousin told her it would be 'very lucrative', the court heard. She was taken in by a Vietnamese woman called Nhi in Geylang in return for a payment of $700. The teenager began working as a pub hostess, losing her virginity to a customer after Nhi introduced them.

She returned to Vietnam a month later but came here again on a number of occasions to work as a freelance prostitute. The girl was arrested in Geylang last July for suspected vice.

- The Straits Times