Man guilty of molesting ‘godson’, who looked up to him as replacement father figure, for 7 years

SINGAPORE: For over seven years, a man took advantage of a boy who looked up to him as a replacement father figure after the death of his father.

The 64-year-old New Zealander, named in court documents as Chin Esau John, molested the victim from when the latter was 11 until he turned 18. The offences occurred between 2002 and 2008 during Chin’s visits to Singapore. 

Even after the victim, now 34, learned that the acts were wrong, he was reluctant to report Chin until 2023 due to their prior “father-son relationship”. The victim’s identity is protected by a gag order. 

Chin was found guilty of seven counts of molest on Friday (Mar 14). 

Delivering the guilty verdict, District Judge Shaiffudin Saruwan said that he found the victim a credible and forthright witness who showed candour during Chin’s trial. 

The judge said he did not find the victim less credible for not telling anyone about Chin’s acts earlier, noting that victims of sexual assault did not react in set manners. 

He noted that the victim had shared a close and special relationship with Chin, who replaced the victim’s deceased father.

Chin was the victim’s “disciplinarian”, “spiritual guide” and “best friend”, the judge observed. 

The victim himself testified during trial that the delay in his reporting was in part due to his fear of Chin as a disciplinarian. He also said he did not want to lose a father figure a second time around.

VICTIM AND CHIN SHARED A BED

The victim is the eldest of three children and was the only boy in his family, while Chin was a close family friend. 

Chin, who was formerly a Singapore citizen, would stay with the victim’s family at least once a year when he returned from New Zealand between 2000 and 2020.

During the early years of Chin’s stay, he would shower naked with the victim. This was when Chin first started touching the victim’s private parts, causing him pain. However, these acts were not the subject of his charges. 

The molest would occur when the victim and Chin shared a bed when sleeping. Chin would perform a sexual act on the victim, who would pretend to sleep but try to squirm and move away from Chin’s touch. 

Due to his youth, the victim was not sure if the acts were usually performed between father and son, and he still looked up to Chin as a father figure. 

Chin also advised the victim to perform the same acts on himself at least once a week to “clear” his system. 

By 2005, the victim became used to the molest and did not question Chin, whom he saw as his disciplinarian. However, the victim, by then a teen, began to grow disgusted with the acts. He began to distance himself from Chin. 

In 2007, Chin returned to Singapore to help the victim matriculate into a polytechnic. He molested the victim in the same manner, but the victim did not know how to address the issue. 

Chin only stopped molesting the victim sometime between 2008 and 2009, when the victim told him that he was in a relationship with a classmate from school. 

When the victim admitted to having sex with his girlfriend, Chin told him that sex should be for marriage. 

In his defence, Chin denied ever touching the victim’s penis, although he admitted to showering naked with him. 

He claimed that he only instructed the victim about how to perform sexual acts by demonstrating them with a banana, or by giving him verbal instructions in “five simple rules”. 

Chin also tried to argue that the victim had been driven to lie as he felt humiliated by an incident in 2020, when Chin had asked for a knife to discipline him.

The victim testified in court that he felt fear, not humiliation, from this incident. He felt that Chin had “revealed his true colours” during this incident, and decided then to tell the truth about Chin.

He told the police that Chin, his “godfather”, had molested him when he was between 11 and 18 years old. 

Chin had also called the victim’s two sisters as defence witnesses. Both are estranged from the victim and are Chin’s bailors. 

The prosecution said the sisters are “deeply biased” towards Chin, to the extent that they did not ask the victim for his side of the story. 

“They have admitted to discussing the case with the accused all the way up to trial, and were intimately involved and invested in clearing the accused of his accusations,” the prosecution said. 

Chin will return to court on Apr 15 for mitigation and sentencing.