Man who assaulted ex-girlfriend, threatened to circulate her nude photos, jailed seven months

A 32-year-old man who assaulted his then-girlfriend and threatened to circulate nude photographs of her performing sexual acts was sentenced to seven months' jail by a district court on Friday (June 2).

Earlier this week, the man had been found guilty of criminal intimidation and voluntarily causing hurt. A third charge of committing a rash act to endanger the personal safety of the victim was taken into consideration for sentencing. Both the man and the victim cannot be named due to a gag order.

On Feb 5 this year, the couple got into a heated argument where the man accused the victim of having affairs behind his back. The pair knew each other since 2000 and started dating sometime in 2014.

However, he did not find anything to confirm his suspicions after checking messages on her mobile phone and Facebook account. In a fit of anger, he threw the victim's phone at her face and punched her about five times near her left eye.

A day after the assault, the man - who was still holding on to his girlfriend's phone - accessed the victim's Facebook account and sent her elder sister three lewd photographs of the victim.

Claiming that the victim had used his name to borrow S$5,000 from the loansharks, the man threatened to circulate the photographs as a means to seek payment. He was arrested after the victim lodged a police report on the night of Feb 6.

Calling for a jail term of at least six months, deputy public prosecutor Sruthi Boppana noted that during the assault, the man had targeted a vulnerable portion of the victim's body. The punches, she added, focused on the victim's left eye region - the same area where the man threw the mobile phone at.

She also pointed out that by sending the lewd images to the victim's elder sister, the man had already tarnished the victim's reputation. He had also falsely accused her of taking loans from loansharks.

Ms Sruthi noted that the incident had stemmed from the man's own misplaced fears that the victim was cheating on him. But jealousy, she said, could not by any measure justify what the man had put the victim through.
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"The use of physical violence and subsequent threats to make their intimate moments public were entirely uncalled for, and would understandably have caused the victim significant fear and distress," said Ms Sruthi.