A 47-YEAR-OLD man, who was initially cleared of raping a mentally disabled teenager, was on Wednesday convicted of the offence after the Court of Appeal overturned the lower court's decision.
Last August, the High Court had acquitted Gansean Rengasamy of rape, saying there was not enough evidence to show that he had sex with the 15-year-old against her will.
On Wednesday, the three-judge court, comprising Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong and Judges of Appeal Andrew Phang and V.K. Rajah, disagreed. Delivering the decision, Justice Rajah said the facts of the case - contrary to the trial judge's view - all pointed compellingly to the conclusion that the teenager had not consented to having sex.
The girl has an intelligence quotient (IQ) of 44 and is considered moderately mentally retarded. Normal IQs are between 90 and 110. She testified during the trial last year that Gansean had accosted her at her block of flats in the Jurong area as she was walking home.
She said he had grabbed her arm, pulled her to a nearby staircase and raped her. Three passers-by saw the girl struggling while being held by Gansean and detained him until the police came.
However, Gansean, a former airport worker, denied having sex with the girl. He claimed he was sniffing glue at the block when the teenager came up to pester him for $10.
He claimed he ran away when the passers-by chased him because he thought they were police officers trying to catch him for glue-sniffing.
High Court judge Choo Han Teck found that sexual intercourse had taken place between the pair. But he found that the girl's testimony was 'weak and inconclusive', and that there was insufficient evidence to prove that the sex was non-consensual.
Gansean was instead convicted on a lesser charge of having sex with a girl below the age of 16. He was sentenced to four years' jail. Prosecutors appealed, arguing that the girl did not consent to sex. Gansean also appealed.
On Wednesday, his appeal was thrown out. The appeal judges agreed with the prosecution that the teenager had been sexually assaulted. Justice Rajah said the girl was consistent in her description of the assault. Her account was also consistent with that of one of the passers-by, who saw her trying to push Gansean away. Gansean will be sentenced at a later date. He faces up to 20 years' jail and caning.
Read the full story in Thursday's edition of The Straits Times
