Man on trial for stalking woman blasted by judge for asking scandalous questions in Singapore court

The Star

10 hours ago

SINGAPORE: A man who stalked a former co-worker for five years continued harassing her even during his trial, where he represented himself and asked her irrelevant questions over seven days of cross-examination.
Lucas Seng Yong Yi, 39, also subjected other prosecution witnesses to similar antics by asking them scandalous questions during the trial, which spanned over 70 days from April 2021 to September 2024.
Seng was sentenced to 18 months' jail by a district judge in late 2024 after he was convicted of three charges of stalking under the Protection from Harassment Act.
Justice Vincent Hoong blasted Seng's behaviour in court in a written decision on Aug 8 after dismissing the offender's appeal against conviction and sentence on July 30.
The High Court judge said Seng's conduct at the trial was 'outrageous'.
Justice Hoong agreed with the lower court that Seng's deplorable conduct during the trial was an aggravating factor in the sentencing.
He said Seng had engaged in victim-blaming, such as contending that the victim had brought some of the acts of harassment on herself because she uploaded her resume onto LinkedIn.
Seng also posed scandalous and irrelevant questions at length to the prosecution's witnesses.
For instance, he alleged that a male witness was homosexual and was lying in court about being the woman's boyfriend.
Seng asked the man if he knew the victim's 'cup size' and if he liked 'sexy men'.
He also asked the victim's cousin whether he could kiss her.
Seng also made baseless allegations that the prosecution, the police, and various witnesses were fabricating evidence and conspiring against him.
'His conduct at the trial wasted judicial time and resources, caused annoyance to witnesses (including the victim), and undermined the sanctity of the proceedings. It also evidenced a clear lack of remorse,' said Justice Hoong.
While self-represented individuals are given some latitude in presenting their cases, that did not give Seng the right to harass the witnesses with repetitive or irrelevant questions, he said.
The judge noted that Seng was told repeatedly by the trial judge that certain lines of questioning were irrelevant to the issues to be determined.
Justice Hoong added: 'By frequently raising scandalous allegations without any reasonable grounds, the appellant only harmed his own case by demonstrating that he did not have a cogent defence that cast doubt on the prosecution's evidence and had to resort to accusing the prosecution's witnesses of unfounded conspiracies against him.'
He noted that trial judges should not intervene excessively in the questioning of witnesses to avoid giving the impression that they are predisposed towards a particular outcome.
However, if the court steps in when the questions are not relevant, intended to insult or annoy, or needlessly repetitive, this would not amount to improper judicial interference or 'descending into the arena', he said.
Between 2015 and 2020, Seng repeatedly sent the woman text messages, ordered sample products to be delivered to her home, and mailed her his court papers to pressure her into dropping criminal charges against him.
In his defence, Seng argued that he believed he was the woman's boyfriend.
He said he formed this impression because of certain text messages she had sent him.
Justice Hoong said Seng could not have reasonably believed that he was in a romantic relationship with the victim, as the woman had sent him multiple text messages in which she clearly stated that she was not romantically interested in him.
Even if Seng thought that he was the victim's boyfriend, his text messages to her would not be reasonable, given her unequivocal demands for him to stop messaging her, said the judge.
Seng also claimed that the woman had set a trap to frame him on in April 2017, by stalking him at his void deck, and that the police reports she filed against him were a 'test of love'.
The victim said she saw him on the bus and decided to confront him. Her boyfriend, who later joined them at the void deck, corroborated this.
But Seng claimed that the man was not a credible witness because if he was attracted to men, he could not have been the victim's boyfriend, and therefore must have been instigated by the woman to lie in court. - The Straits Times/ANN