61-year-old Soh Guan Hup was sentenced to 6 months imprisonment on 20 February after being found guilty of one count of outrage of modesty, according to Channel NewsAsia.
The private driving instructor had molested a female student during a driving lesson in which he was teaching the victim how to park a car in 2018.
The victim took 24 manual driving lessons from Soh between 2017 and 2018, and she would board his car near the Bukit Gombak MRT station.
The lessons would be conducted near the Bukit Batok Driving Centre and the Lim Chu Kang area, and the victim claimed that Soh would joke about inappropriate things during the lessons.
He joked that he could rape her when they were driving towards Lim Chu Kang because of how dark and quiet the roads were.
On 3 March 2018, Soh was teaching the victim how to park on a side road in Choa Chu Kang when she felt him press a finger against her chest.
She was so affected that she couldn’t park the car and Soh had to take over the steering wheel.
The victim then told her boyfriend about what happened, along with her parents, and her father wanted to report the man to the police but her mother wanted to get more information from the victim first.
The victim eventually didn’t report Soh to the police.
on 8 March 2018, before her final driving lesson and driving test, the victim and her boyfriend confronted Soh, who denied the accusations. She then proceeded with her final driving lesson with Soh and took her test, paying him the car rental fee and cutting off all contact with him.
The victim later confided in a friend about the molestation in 2020, who then told her that outrage of modesty cases can be reported at any time, and the victim then lodged a police report.
Soh denied touching the victim and claimed that any contact physically was accidental, he added that he avoided contact because it would be dangerous while driving.
He also added that he had more than 1,200 students over 30 years and had few complaints.
Soh was eventually found guilty but is intending to appeal against his conviction.