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SINGAPORE: During a class at a literacy and language training center, a three-year-old student was sexually abused by a reading specialist while the children were watching a video.
British citizen Richard Christopher Monks, 29, pleaded guilty on Monday (February 1) to one count of using criminal force to outrage the modesty of a minor. He had originally been scheduled for trial, but decided to admit the charges.
The court heard that Monks worked at a language center that is not listed in the court documents. The students were between two and a half and 12 years old.
The victim was 3 years and 11 months old at the time of the crime and attended Monks’s lessons at the center every Saturday, calling him “Master Richard.”
On October 20, 2018, he went to receive his lesson in a classroom with a table in the middle of the room. The victim was the youngest of a class of six, with her companions of four or five years.
At about 5:20 p.m., Monks gathered all the students to sit at the side of the table for a video session, standing behind the students and in front of a closed-circuit television camera that he knew was in the room.
In this way, the upper body of the students blocked the camera’s view of their hands, while the lower halves of the children’s bodies could not be captured.
After playing a video on her phone and placing it on the table for students to see, Monks sat behind the victim and repeatedly slipped his hand under her dress to abuse her.
Uncomfortable with his touch, the victim expressed her discomfort by fidgeting and turning to look at him several times. The incident clip was played on the open track. Despite the victim’s reactions, Monks continued to abuse the girl.
The crime was not detected until October 27, 2018, when the girl’s parents were preparing to take her to another of Monks’s lessons. The girl seemed reluctant and, when asked, told her mother that “Master Richard” had touched her.
When asked where he touched her, the girl pointed to her buttocks and said that this happened during the previous lesson. The victim’s mother filed a police report that day and stopped taking her son to classes at the center.
Investigations showed that Monks had repeatedly pointed his phone camera at the victim’s buttocks on the day he abused her, but left Singapore on October 27, 2018, the day the report was submitted.
He traveled to Thailand and returned to Singapore on October 31, 2018 and was arrested a day later. He claimed that he had lost his phone in Thailand, so how many photos or videos he had taken cannot be determined.
Monks will return to court for mitigation and sentencing on Wednesday.
For using criminal force to violate the modesty of a minor, they could be imprisoned for up to five years, fined, flogged, or receive a combination of these punishments.
