Public Prosecutor v Khor Khai Gin, Davis

From sometime in 2020 until his arrest on 1 March 2021, Khor Khai Gin Davis messaged girls on Instagram offering a part-time job or cash, then invited them to his home to engage in sexual acts for money. At least four girls responded and went to his residence, and he performed sexual acts on three of them. He pleaded guilty in Criminal Case No 69 of 2022 to four charges, with six others taken into consideration.

The proceeded charges were: attempted rape of V1, then 13 years old and recently run away from a welfare home, on 21 August 2020, after offering her S$200 and booking a Grab ride to bring her (the Sixth Charge); sexual penetration of V1 with a vibrator on 23 February 2021 after renewed messaging (the Second Charge); sexual penetration of V2, aged 15, with a vibrator on 28 September 2020 (the Third Charge); and sexual grooming of V3, aged 14 (the Tenth Charge). He recorded his acts with V1 on an iPad. The attempted rape failed only because he could not achieve an erection, not because V1 resisted.

The Sixth Charge was committed after 1 January 2020, when the Criminal Law Reform Act 2019 replaced s 511 of the Penal Code with new ss 511 and 512. This removed the rule that an attempt could attract at most half the maximum imprisonment term for the completed offence. The High Court had to decide, for the first time, how to sentence attempted rape under the new provisions.

1. What sentencing approach applies to attempted rape committed on or after 1 January 2020, now that the statutory one-half limit has been abolished.
2. What sentence was appropriate for the attempted rape of V1 under that approach.
3. What sentences were appropriate for the sexual penetration and grooming charges, and how they should run.

On the approach, the court adopted the Prosecution's two-stage method: first apply the framework in Ng Kean Meng Terence v Public Prosecutor [2017] 2 SLR 449 to fix the sentence for a notional completed offence, then apply a discount because the offence was not completed. The Penal Code Review Committee had said that there is no reason in principle why an attempt is only half as blameworthy, and left the discount to judicial discretion. The method also fitted the Court of Appeal's acceptance in Public Prosecutor v Mas Swan bin Adnan and another appeal [2012] 3 SLR 527 of English cases on attempted drug importation, and the English and, implicitly, Australian approach. The Defence's alternatives would only replace one arbitrary fraction with another.

On the Sixth Charge, high premeditation through social media and the victim's vulnerability, with an age gap of about 31 years, placed the notional offence in Band 2 at a starting point of 14 years and 12 strokes, adjusted to 12 years and ten strokes for his serial offending against his early plea and cooperation. A discount of three years and four strokes reflected the lesser harm, balanced against his persistence until he failed physically.

For the Second Charge, the Pram Nair framework gave an 11-year starting point, reduced to ten years and seven strokes, and a further three months for 87 days in remand. For the Third Charge, the three-year starting point in Public Prosecutor v BAB [2017] 1 SLR 292 required abuse of trust, which was absent, so the court started from the AQW benchmark and imposed two years. Sexual grooming of V3, whom he pressured repeatedly, warranted nine months. One sentence per victim ran consecutively, and the total was not crushing.

The High Court sentenced the accused to nine years and nine months' imprisonment and seven strokes of the cane for the Second Charge, two years' imprisonment for the Third Charge, nine years' imprisonment and six strokes of the cane for the Sixth Charge, and nine months' imprisonment for the Tenth Charge. The Second, Third and Tenth Charge sentences ran consecutively and the Sixth concurrently, for a global sentence of 12 years and six months' imprisonment and 13 strokes of the cane.