Beating sentence for man with 304 obscene videos of children

SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/ANN): A married man who went online and searched for sexually explicit material, especially about children, was later found with 304 videos of such content.

On November 4, Mohamad Fadli Kamaral Jaman, 36, was sentenced to two years and one month in prison and four strokes of the cane after pleading guilty to possession of child abuse material.

Deputy Prosecutor Benjamin Low told the court that while Fadli was browsing pornographic websites in 2022, he came across a video of a child engaging in sexual intercourse with an adult.

Shortly thereafter, he used a file-sharing program to search for “pre-pubescent” material and downloaded them to a hard drive for his own viewing.

Without giving details, the prosecutor said that police from the Crimes Specialized Branch of the Criminal Investigation Department later received information about Fadlı’s crime and raided his house on February 20, 2023.

DPP Low added: “The defendant was then contacted by his wife… who informed him that police officers were at their home and requested that the defendant return home urgently.”

He reached home and was arrested after confessing to officers that he had downloaded sexually explicit material featuring children.

It was later revealed that there were 304 videos showing such content on his computer and hard drive.

Fadli was represented by attorneys Amarick Gill and S. Ramanujen, who stated in court documents that he has a 10-year-old son.

They demanded that their clients be sentenced to two years in prison and four canings.

Lawyers from the law firm Amarick Gill emphasized that he was remorseful and said: “He did not share, distribute, disseminate or sell the videos for any monetary gain. Fadli is very ashamed that he brought this upon himself.”

There have been about 140 police investigations into cases involving child sexual abuse material since 2020, Home Affairs Minister Sun Xueling said in September.

The offense of possessing such material came into force in January 2020. Offenders face a mandatory prison sentence of up to five years and may also be fined or caned.

According to figures provided by the Singapore judiciary, the number of cases has been increasing since 2020. There was one case that year, but no cases in 2021.

It jumped to five cases in 2022 and seven cases in 2023. -The Straits Times/ANN