An adjunct teacher in Singapore was sentenced today to seven weeks in jail for injuries he caused to a 10-year-old-boy for having allegedly bullied his son.
Tan Chin Tai, a 44-year-old Ministry of Education (MOE) teacher, pleaded guilty to one count of voluntarily causing hurt to his unidentified victim, who was a Primary 4 student at the time the incident occurred, reported Channel News Asia.
The incident occurred on July 7, 2017 in the afternoon when Tan went to school to pick up his son, Yahoo Singapore reported. According to Tan, he was made aware that the boy regularly bullied his son, and even thought of transferring his son to another school for protection, prior to the altercation.
When Tan spotted the victim on campus that day, he instead approached him and grabbed the boy’s bag, then shoved him towards a wall.
Tan allegedly scolded the boy and said to him: “Just because you are bigger in size, you can bully others. Since you can bully my son, I can bully you.”
The incident allegedly left the boy in pain for days after the confrontation, and an X-ray showed that he had a fracture in his rib. Tan tried to pay for the boy’s medical fees by giving him $229.50. However, the victim’s family refused to accept it.
According to Tan’s lawyer Cory Wong, the victim had allegedly been taunting Tan’s son daily since the early part of 2017. The victim allegedly cursed at Tan’s son in Hokkien often, and insulted the boy’s mother, Tan’s wife. The victim warned other kids not to speak to the boy, and even allegedly hurt Tan’s son physically, on occasion.
Wong said that when his client reported the incidents of bullying to authorities at the school, Tan was allegedly told that “the victim had anger management issues and [Tan] felt that his concerns were being brushed aside,” said Wong.
After Tan confronted the boy, the latter’s bullying behavior allegedly escalated, and he even allegedly told Tan’s son that his father is a “murderer.” Wong also accused the victim of warning other students in the school that they would end up getting a fracture from Tan if they played with his son.
Wong said that Tan initially wanted to engage with the victim in a peaceful manner on the day of the incident, but the boy “cockily ignored” his client. The boy’s reaction allegedly drove Tan to act in a manner that was out of his character, Wong said.
Meanwhile, Deputy Public Prosecutor Tan Wei Ming said that Tan should have just escalated his son’s problems to the school’s discipline master, its principal, or the Ministry of Education instead of resorting to violence against the victim.
During the sentencing, Wong asked the court for leniency and asked for a four-week imprisonment for his client, but District Judge Christopher Tan refused.
“If I take the position that such behavior between children justifies an adult going to school and inflicting the kind of injury that happened in this case … what kind of precedent would that set?” the judge said.
After the hearing, Tan spoke with his friends before he was taken away to start his prison sentence.
