When you have a bad experience with a taxi or private-hire car ride, it’s usually because they drove recklessly or took the longer way.
But for one 13-year-old boy in 2017, it was something much, much worse.
58 YO ComfortDelGro Taxi Driver Touched a 13 YO Boy’s Crotch Twice While Driving Him Home
On 21 July that year, the boy was supposed to go home to change his clothes and bag before returning to school for his co-curricular activity (CCA).
He asked his friend to accompany him home, and they got a taxi.
The taxi driver, Chew Lye Beng, made a rather odd request, asking the 13-year-old boy to sit in the front seat. The boy said he agreed because it didn’t matter to him where he sat.
The other boy, his friend, sat in the backseat of the cab.
When Chew began asking the young teenager personal questions, the boy didn’t think much of it.
It was only when Chew pinched his cheeks that the 13-year-old grew uncomfortable, as the cabbie was a stranger to him.
Then, when they reached the boy’s condominium in Clementi, Chew touched the boy’s crotch twice while ‘helping’ him to unbuckle his seatbelt.
As the judge would later note in court, the boy was “perfectly able to unbuckle it on his own”.
When the two boys got out of the taxi, Chew got out too. The victim then told his friend that the cabbie had touched his “bottom area”.
Chew asked the victim to direct him to a toilet on the condo grounds, asking him several times if he wanted to accompany him there.
When the other boy followed them, Chew asked him to stay behind.
Fortunately, the victim did not end up going into the toilet with Chew because he was scared.
School Reported Molestation to Police
When the two teenagers were in the victim’s home, they retrieved a penknife in case Chew was still around when they went down.
When the victim’s mother saw this, she asked what it was for, and the boy said it was for “self-defence”.
Chew had already left when the two went down. The victim’s mother took a photo of the cabbie’s licence plate that had been recorded when he entered the condo, and later called ComfortDelGro to file a complaint.
When the boys returned to school for their CCA, the teacher-in-charged noticed that the victim was not his usual self.
The boy then told her what happened, and was “uncomfortable, fidgety and not forthcoming” when doing so.
The teacher informed the school’s discipline committee and the victim made a police report at Bukit Timah Neighbourhood Police Post that evening.
Faces Up to Five Years in Jail
The 58-year-old cabbie was arrested the next morning.
He initially claimed he touched the victim while helping him with a defective seatbelt and said he even had proof in the form of a report made to ComfortDelGro.
But he later admitted that he made no such report.
On Thursday (25 March), Chew was convicted of molestation of a minor and is due to return to court on 13 April.
If found guilty, Chew faces five years’ imprisonment, a fine, caning, or any combination of the three.
Featured Image: Dr David Sing / Shutterstock.com
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