Everything Also Complain

From ‘Underage prostitute is now Miss XXX?’, 22 April 2012, article by Shaffiq Alkhatib, TNP

Five days ago, lawyer Subhas Anandan disputed the charges his clients were slapped with as he felt the charges were “flawed because they lacked essential particulars”. Mr Anandan represents 10 of the 44 men who were charged on Monday with engaging the services of an underage prostitute. He said: “They don’t have the name of the girl, her date of birth. How do you expect my clients to plead guilty?”

Another lawyer, Mr Luke Lee, who represents two of the 44 men, agreed. “The charges are defective because the name of the victim and her date of birth are missing. We’re in the position of having the charges amended,” said Mr Lee.

On Wednesday, four more men were charged with having paid sex with the same girl. But their charge sheets are different. Lawyer Wendell Wong, who represents Howard Shaw Chai Li, 41, one of yesterday’s four accused, told The New Paper that the charge sheet he received includes the girl’s name and date of birth. But reporters in court yesterday were given a different set of charge sheets. In theirs, the girl is identified as “XXX who is under 18 years of age”.

The Attorney-General’s Chambers said yesterday evening that the charges against the 44 men will be amended to include the girl’s name. It will also apply for a gag order to protect her identity.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter, a woman is branded with a symbol of her sin of Adultery (the uppercase letter ‘A’) and publicly shamed by town elders.  In this media hoo-ha that involves more than 48 men who willingly, or unwittingly, had sex with a girl at least half their age, it appears that it’s not the female at the centre of the scandal being paraded around for all to see (although internet leaks have long revealed her identity, whether true or not), but the men who are being punished and shamed, short of being labelled as sick pedophiles, their reputations ripped to shreds. Some have to resort to dressing like the Unabomber just to avoid recognition. But we can’t resist running through the list still, the media sating our gossipy appetites for scandal and the human tendency of lapping up anything bad that happens, as long as they happen to other people.

By now, most of us should be familiar but not exactly understand the various sex laws that deal with minors 14, 16 and 18 years of age which are complicated by foggy terms like ‘rape’, ‘consent’ and ‘commercial sex’. Section 376B of the Penal Code, under which these men were charged, was intended to protect a higher proportion of minors, defined by Ho Peng Kee in 2008 as ‘young persons, because they are immature and vulnerable and can be exploited and, therefore, should be protected from providing sexual services’.  You don’t even need to have actual foreplay with a minor below 16 years to be charged for ‘sexual grooming’, as long as you  (or the girl) have the ‘intention’ of doing so, though I wonder if that covers innuendos like ‘inviting a girl up to view my vintage Hello Kitty collection’. An undercover job by the New Paper in 2010 set up a potential ‘sex predator’ with one of their own reporters posing as a girl responding to an online ad, which shows how easy it is to bait horny men. If a man has sexual intentions and is willing to pay money for it, he’s a sexual predator if the girl’s barely 17, but not if they had sex on her 18th birthday. If a barely legal girl dupes a man into sex or subsequently blackmails him with such ‘protective’ laws as backing, it implies calculation and motive, and you’d have to wonder who’s ‘vulnerable’, ‘immature’ and being ‘exploited’ in this instance. Such a scenario of a scheming minor was dramatised to balls-cringing extremes in the movie ‘Hard Candy’.

Of course, a girl of XXX’s age couldn’t possibly have the wiles to ensnare unsuspecting men, a presumption that puts men entirely at the mercy of laws that persist in regarding minors as blank slates who can’t act responsibly by themselves. One doesn’t have to think too far back when it comes to celebrity ‘mystery women’ who were granted immunity from media shaming. Just a few months ago, the whole of Singapore was kept in the dark over who Yaw Shin Leong was cheating with, or the ‘IT exec’ who was sleeping around with SCDF and CNB chiefs. In 2004, ex CNA presenter Vidya Shankar was charged for ‘molest’ of a ’30 year old female colleague’ after the latter ended up in his room in a drunken state. Yet, if the objective of such laws and their gag order tools are to ‘protect’ minors/victims, no secrecy is spared if you’re talking about sex tape leaks, like the Tammy NYP case in 2006. So, if a 17 year old sleeps around with men of her own free will, films it and the video is leaked, the media will pounce on it and not only hint at where to find such videos but reveal her name and school as well, nevermind how she was ‘victimised’ in this blatant invasion of privacy. If the same 17 year old solicits for sex, there’s immediately ‘a kind of hush ‘all over the world and the girl becomes ‘She who shall not be named’.  The men she sleep with are branded as lonely, repressed, cheating sex maniac monsters and are cursed with this ‘scarlet letter’ (P for paedophile) for the rest of their lives. Even ‘sexual grooming’ may involve some form of transaction before actual sex (expensive dinners, luxury goods, ‘allowances’), but a manipulative ‘sugar daddy’ gets 3 years jail for even trying, while a man who thinks nothing of emotionally tormenting little girls but conned into underaged ‘commercial’ sex faces 7 years. I’m not saying these men are innocent, but in all the encounters, XXX knew exactly what she was doing, while her clients were mostly clueless, or had their ability to think diminished by a surge of testosterone.

In a recent train sex orgy scandal in Taiwan, the 17 year old in the thick of it was given the nickname ‘Xiao Yu’ by Taiwanese media. Here, 18 men were set up by a sex party organiser to frolic with a willing youth in a train carriage, having paid some ‘admission fee’ for the train.The ‘pimp’ equivalent was arrested for ‘violating public decency’, with no news I could uncover on the other men being jailed or exposed. How would Singapore courts handle such a case, I wonder. Technically, the host wasn’t running a vice ring, the girl wasn’t a hooker, and the men were just treating her as part of the entertainment for the 800 NT party package ($27, a bargain really). The outcome here is likely to be equally ‘Y-chromosome’-unfriendly.

‘XXX’ used to be an anonymous moniker people use to sign off ransom letters, lovers signing off kisses, or to classify what we now call ‘adult films’.  Instead of using ‘underaged prostitute’ or the very telling ‘XXX’ in subsequent coverage couldn’t the courts and media come up with something more imaginative? Something more befitting of a ‘clueless, vulnerable, Chinese’ girl than ‘Miss XXX’ which is more suited for a boudoir-owning nymphomaniac hostess with dominatrix tendencies ? A few things won’t change even if all 80 men are nabbed. Some men will still want sex with young virgins and pay hundreds of dollars if they could afford it. Some girls will still sell their bodies though ‘escort services’ or to sugar daddies if it gets them what other part-time jobs can’t provide. The Internet will still exist and people will continue to blame it for AIDS and the decline of all our morals. And if all vice sites are shut down because of XXX, there’s always Batam.

XXX is a new breed of SECRET 'agent'

Filed under: 2012, Justice system/Lawsuits, Kids, Sex, Singaporean men, Singaporean women Tagged: | justice system, prostitution, Sex