A 26-year-old man was sentenced yesterday in the High Court to 10 years and 10 weeks in jail, as well as six strokes of the cane, after he pleaded guilty to statutory rape.

The court heard that he met a 12-year-old girl through an online chat app called BeeTalk in September 2017 and subsequently had sex with her twice within the week.

He also admitted to posting nude photographs of two former girlfriends, aged 23 and 25, on social networking site Tumblr between 2015 and 2017.

He pleaded guilty to one charge of statutory rape and two charges of transmitting obscene material. Two other charges - for statutory rape and sexual exploitation of a child - were taken into consideration.

The man cannot be named owing to a gag order to protect the victims' identities.

Prosecutors said the accused displayed predatory conduct by befriending the 12-year-old victim on BeeTalk and immediately sexually grooming her by sending her lewd messages and encouraging her to have sex with him.

The court was told that the man, among other things, asked the victim on the day they became acquainted if she "played games".

The victim thought he meant mobile phone games, but the accused quickly dispelled this notion and initiated highly sexually charged messages, which court documents said were wholly inappropriate for a 12-year-old.

They had their first meet-up the next day, Sept 14, 2017. The man had chosen a secluded spot to have sex with the girl on the third-floor stairwell at Leng Kee Community Club in Redhill.

He had sex with her again on the morning of Sept 18, 2017, at her home when she skipped school and nobody was home.

That evening, the victim's mother confiscated her mobile phone and found sexually explicit messages from the accused asking for nude photographs.

The next day, the victim's mother and her aunt informed the girl's school before a police report was made.

During police investigations, the man admitted that he was aware that having sex with a person under the age of 14 was an offence.

Meanwhile, the court heard that the 23-year-old victim had been in a relationship with the man in 2010 but they had broken up shortly after. After a nude picture of the victim was found on his phone during police investigations, he admitted to having uploaded two nude pictures of her.

As for the 25-year-old victim, she was still in a relationship with the man when he uploaded eight nude photographs of her between February and March 2017.

The prosecution told the court that the man caused untold distress and humiliation to the victims when they discovered the posts.