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SINGAPORE: A 51-year-old man befriended a 10-year-old girl on the social media app TikTok, pretending to be 25, before taking her home where he abused her.
Jambi Arbi was sentenced to 23 months in jail on Wednesday (September 9) after pleading guilty to one count of using criminal force against a minor to outrage her modesty.
The court heard that Jambi, who was self-employed in computer-aided design writing, met the victim, a 10-year-old elementary school student, on TikTok in late January this year.
They communicated frequently, with Jambi lying to her that she was 25 years old and telling her that he loved her and calling her “dear.”
On February 25, Jambi sent a message to the victim asking him to meet her the next afternoon after school finished.
She agreed when Jambi said he would take her to a game room and also asked him to bring a t-shirt.
The night before departure, the victim’s father checked his phone and found that he was communicating with Jambi on the social media platform.
He saw Jambi professing his love for the victim and also read about the proposed meeting.
FATHER REQUESTED TEACHER TO PREVENT VICTIM FROM LEAVING SCHOOL
The victim’s father did not immediately confront the girl while she slept, instead texting his daughter’s teacher to tell her not to allow the victim to leave school after classes ended.
The next day, the victim’s father went to school at 1:30 p.m., but could not find his daughter. Later, the teachers told him that she had left earlier and he called the police for help locating her.
At approximately 2 p.m., the victim met Jambi at the Yio Chu Kang MRT station, where the defendant asked him to change his school outfit for the shirt he brought and gave him a pair of sunglasses to to put them on.
He took her on his motorcycle and they ate at McDonald’s before heading to a game room next door.
The defendant then took the girl home where he abused her, telling her that it would “help her be more flexible” and “gain weight because she was too thin.”
He kept kissing the girl, which made her feel awkward and terrified. She told him she wanted to go home and finally Jambi dropped her off at her school.
The girl returned home shortly after police responded to the case, and Jambi was tracked down and arrested.
Assistant District Attorney R. Arvindren asked for at least 22 months in jail, including two months in lieu of flogging, as Jambi is over 50 years old and cannot be flogged.
He called Jambi a “sexual predator who preyed on a 10-year-old innocent young victim for his sexual gratification.”
“He used a social media app to find his victim and finally put his perverted plan into action,” he said.
The girl was particularly vulnerable and was unable to escape because she was trapped in Jambi’s home, she said.
Jambi had also tried to “bribe” the boy into accepting his actions by buying him food and taking it to the game room, the prosecutor said.
To this day, the girl can clearly remember what happened and is “traumatized” by the incident.
For sexually abusing the girl, Jambi could have been jailed for up to five years, fined, flogged, or received any combination of these punishments.
