A 36-year-old former teacher named Loh Wei Qi was sentenced to two weeks’ jail on Friday December 9 for one count of possessing 7,786 obscene films.
The primary school teacher downloaded the Canadian version of Kik after seeing an online comment offering to share pornography with anyone willing to connect, according to CNA.
The 36-year-old received multiple obscene video files, including child pornography.
WHO REPORTED TO POLICE
According to CNA, Canadian authorities informed the Singapore Police Force about a Singaporean IP address that was connected to the distribution of child abuse material via Canadian App Kik.
The address was traced to the Singaporean teacher, who resigned about two years after his arrest.
Kik is a Canada based mobile messaging application that can be used on both android and iPhone. The popular app which is free to use is similar to Viber and WhatsApp but has some additional functions that differentiate it.
The court was informed that Loh started watching porn in 2011 or 2012 while working as a teacher at Park View Primary School. He came across an anonymous user’s comment on Tumblr in 2016 that claimed they would distribute porn with anyone who added them on Kik.
Loh added the unknown user to his Kik account after signing up. He started sending and receiving files and movies with obscene content via the app.
Although he did not deliberately look for child porn, he received and sent out such material, CNA reported.
INTERPOL ALERTED SPF
Loh discovered his account had been suspended and he was unable to log in in December 2018. He removed the application, but he saved the downloaded files. He kept browsing and downloaded porn from other websites.
The Singapore Police Force was informed by Interpol Ottawa in April 2019 that a Singaporean IP address had been connected to the distribution of child abuse material using Kik.
Loh’s electronic and storage devices were seized during a police raid on his Tampines apartment. 7,786 obscene files were found on the devices. 131 of these contained child pornography.
Loh left his position as a teacher in July 2021.
DONE QUITE WELL IN PUBLIC SERVICE : DEF LAWYER
In court Kalidass Murugaiyan, the defence lawyer, attempted to request a community-based punishment.
He said his client had been “done quite well” in public service from 2008, and had been “an exemplary model for his peers”.
He said his client’s parents suffered from mental conditions and that Loh was hit “time and again with multiple stressors”.
The teacher suffers from major depressive disorder, said the lawyer.
Loh was a teacher throughout the teacher throughout the time of the offences, even when police investigations started, Deputy Public Prosecutor Yvonne Poon said in court.
According to the report, Loh admitted to watching adult porn, telling a psychiatrist at the Institute of Mental Health that he started “increasingly” watching porn involving teenage girls in 2017.
“In other words, throughout the bulk of the time he was a teacher working with young children, the accused had been actively … consuming child porn and increasingly viewing porn with young teenage female subjects,” Deputy Public Prosecutor said.
In response, the defence said his client had done “nothing wrong in his course of work”.
None of the videos he watched involved his students, said the lawyer.
“Yes it’s a moral question, but it should not be a sentencing factor per se,” he said.
For the offence of possessing obscene films, Loh could have been jailed for up to 12 months, fined up to S$40,000 or both.
When asked by CNA, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Education (MOE) said Loh is no longer teaching in any school after he resigned in July 2021.
“MOE takes a serious view of staff misconduct and will take disciplinary action against those who fail to adhere to our standards of conduct and discipline, including dismissal from service,” the spokesperson added.
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