The British trio who pleaded guilty on Monday to sexually assaulting a drunken Malaysian woman during a stag party in Singapore have been sentenced to jail terms of up to six-and-a-half years, with caning.
Khong Tam Thanh, Le Michael and Vu Thai Son, all in their 20s, were originally charged with rape but admitted the lesser offence of sexual assault at the city-state’s High Court after a four-day trial.
Khong, 22, received six years in prison with eight strokes of the cane; Vu, 22, was sentenced to six-and-a-half-years in jail with eight strokes of the cane; Le, 24, got five-and-a-half-years’ jail, with five strokes of the cane.
The men, British citizens of Vietnamese origin, were in Singapore in September as part of a group of nine for a bachelor party, and attended an electronic music festival called Ultra Singapore.
The groom, the brother of Khong, was also on the trip.
They met the 23-year-old victim at Zouk, a popular nightspot in the city-state. After she had agreed to have sex with one of their friends, a British citizen also of Vietnamese origin identified as Richard Ahn, he took her to his room at the Carlton Hotel.
After the pair had sex, Khong, 22, Le and Vu — both 24 — took turns to enter the room and have sex with the woman as she lay drunk and unconscious, the court heard.
While the men took care to make as little noise as possible, the woman woke up as Le was assaulting her.
Prosecutors had asked for a prison sentence of between five and seven years.
“The offender must pay for what he has done… (In this case), they clearly exploited the victim,” said deputy public prosecutor G. Kannan.
Khong and Vu, who worked as beauticians in Britain, were convicted of an additional charge of sexual assault by using their fingers to penetrate the woman. Le is unemployed.
The men’s lawyers all read out letters from their clients apologising to the victim.
“(Khong) was rash, he was reckless, and now he regrets it,” his lawyer Shashi Nathan told the court.
He also offered the victim SGD5,000 in compensation, which prosecutors said the woman has accepted.
For aggravated outrage of modesty, each of the convicted could have faced a jail term of up to 10 years, and caning.
Additional reporting by Coconuts Singapore
