68-year-old Gary Alexander Tan, who was described as a “pedophilic school bus driver” in court, was sentenced on Wednesday (1 March) to 11 years and 7 months imprisonment.
He had pleaded guilty to 6 charges which included numerous counts of molestation, and also had 9 other charges taken into consideration during his sentencing.
Tan, a father of 3, was accused of molesting a 4 to 6-year-old girl in church sometime between 1993 and 1995, among other alleged victims.
Tan admitted in earlier court proceedings to molesting other children, including an autistic boy and another young girl.
Molestation spree
Sometime in 2006, Tan was spending the night at a friend’s home when he molested a girl between 3 and 5 years old while his friend was asleep.
He was later hired by a Kindergarten to ferry children with special needs, driving a 7-seater car in 2009 before his contract ended in 2012.
Despite his contract ending, some of the parents continued to hire him to fetch their children to and from school, including an autistic boy between 4 to 6 years old.
Tan molested the boy from 2013 to 2014.
Among Tan’s other victims include a young girl, whose age was not mentioned in court, of whom he took explicit photos – he had befriended the girl’s helper in order to get to the victim.
He took an upskirt photo of the girl after telling her maid that he would look after the girl.
Tan also asked two other helpers that he had befriended to send him explicit photos of young girls, one of whom declined; but the other maid agreed to send him after being told that he would be aroused by it.
Tan instigated that maid to send his explicit photos of her employer’s young daughter on at least 22 occasions, from 5 May to 1 November 2016.
The maid also sent tan 51 photos of another young girl, as well as 3 photos of her employer’s young son not wearing anything.
Tan drove a 9-seater van after he became a school bus driver in 2017, where he was tasked with ferrying children who had been ill-treated.
He was aware that the children were under care arrangements and signed a document to safeguard the sensitive information related to them.
One of the children was an 8-year-old girl who was physically ill-treated and was sent to live with her maternal grandparents and aunt under her care arrangements.
Tan molested her on 12 January 2019 after dropping off the other kids and filmed himself in the act.
He then molested her again on 16 January 2017 and filmed the acts, before showing the girl photos of himself in his underwear about 3 days later.
The victim told her aunt and grandparents about what happened later that month, and her mother was then alerted to it.
The police were then informed about the incident(s) on 26 January 2017 and Tan was arrested later that day, with the police seizing his phone and finding numerous upskirt videos of different victims.