A third-year student of the Singapore Polytechnic was sentenced to two years of probation for outraging the modesty of three girls.
Tan Jian Yong, 22, who had been diagnosed as suffering from major depression and anxiety, committed the first offence on May 4 last year. He had hugged a 16-year-old student in a lift in Dover Crescent at about 8pm that day.
Then on Oct 16 that year, he put his hand underneath the skirt of a 15-year-old and squeezed her private parts as she was leaving her school in Bukit Batok at 4pm. He repeated this offence on a 17-year-old student at 3.30pm on Jan 18 this year, also in the Bukit Batok area.
A district court had heard that Tan, who is studying for a diploma in information technology, became introverted because he was a victim of "a lot of bullying" in his early school days.
Arguing against a jail sentence, defence counsel Ravinderpal Singh said that psychiatrists from the Institute of Mental Health discovered Tan's mental disorder and that his client was undergoing treatment at present.
