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Five youths, aged 17 to 20, went on trial in the High Court yesterday for allegedly gang-raping the 17-year-old girl in the early hours of Boxing Day.
Muhammad Shafie Ahmad Abdullah, 19, Mohd Sadruddin Azman, 19, Lim Boon Tai, 20, Rishi Mohan, 17, and Mohamed Firdaus Roslan, 18, were in a Woodlands flat with the alleged victim when the incident took place.
The girl, now 18 years old, cannot be identified. She is known to one of the five accused.
At the time, Rishi was a student, Shafie and Lim were full-time national servicemen, while Sadruddin and Firdaus were waiting for their O-level results. All are Singaporeans except Rishi, a Malaysian who is a permanent resident here.
Each faces separate charges of rape and sexual assault, but the prosecution has applied for a joint trial as the offences were allegedly committed during the same incident – between 4am and 6am at the Woodlands flat belonging to Shafie’s parents.
Sitting in the dock yesterday, the five appeared at times to be relaxed, occasionally smiling and chatting with one another.
Represented by different lawyers, they are likely to run the defence that the sex was consensual.
Laying out their case against the five accused yesterday, prosecutors told the court that on Christmas night, the girl received a phone call from someone who identified himself as Jonathan. He added that he was from her school.
Although she did not know him, she agreed to meet him for supper at Woodlands. There, she was instead met by the only one in the group whom she knew.
He then took her to the flat and introduced her to the other four. Lim then admitted that he was the Jonathan whom she had spoken to earlier.
At the flat, they played card games, in which the penalty for losing was to drink a cocktail of vodka and soft drinks. The girl drank more than five disposable cups of the cocktail.
They also played Truth or Dare, during which she refused to kiss Lim when asked to perform a dare.
As Shafie’s parents were not at home, the group was startled when someone knocked on the door of the flat.
The girl went to hide in a room with Lim, where he made sexual advances. The girl allowed him to have sex with her. Lim then persuaded her to rest in Shafie’s room and pulled her onto a mattress.
It was then that the rest took turns to sexually violate her, including raping her and making her perform oral sex on them, said Deputy Public Prosecutor Gordon Oh.
Lim then carried her to the toilet and tried to remove traces of semen from her.
At about 8.45am, the girl’s boyfriend called the police to report that she had been sexually assaulted.
The DPP said forensic scientists would testify that the mattress was stained with the girl’s blood, while Lim and Shafie’s DNA were found on the victim.
The girl will testify behind closed doors in the trial, which is scheduled for eight days of hearing. The prosecution is also calling a witness who was inside the flat at the time.
