A 43-year-old was sentenced to seven weeks of imprisonment after the court found him guilty of hurting his son's classmate, who allegedly bullied the 10-year-old for over six months.
The convict is Tan Chin Tai, a registered adjunct teacher with the Ministry of Education. The names of the boy and the classmates were not revealed as per the Court order.
Court documents show that on July 7, 2017, Tan went to pick his son from school in the afternoon and saw one of the classmates of the 10-year-old boy, who he knew has been allegedly bullying his son for almost six months.
After seeing his son's classmate, who is also 10, Tan approached the victim, grabbed his bag handle and while holding his left chest, he pushed the boy to nearby rubbish shed. The convict then pushed him onto the wall and then started to scold him.
He told the boy, "Just because you are bigger in size, you can bully others... since you can bully my son, I can bully you."
On the same day, when the boy felt discomfort on his left chest, he lodged a police complaint at around 8.30 pm and almost one hour later he went to a hospital, where the doctors found a small fracture on his left rib.
During the court hearing Deputy Public Prosecutor Tan Wei Ming urged for a sentence of at least eight weeks of imprisonment arguing that in this case, an adult did not act like the way he should and attacked a child.
The defence lawyer Cory Wong said that his client's actions were a result of his son being bullied for a long time but he didn't have the intention to find the boy in the first instance.
The court also heard that the 10-year-old victim allegedly bullied Tan's son since 2017, by pushing him, verbally abusing him and taunting him to fight back. The court was told that the boy had allegedly threatened to beat up the other children who talked to Tan's son.
Wong told the court that when Tan raised the bullying issue with the school, the authority replied that his son's classmate has anger management issues. So, Tan felt that the school did not pay enough attention to the complaint and even thought to change his son's school.
But, the bullying never stopped and the classmate told his son that his father deserved to go behind bars and be canned 1000 times.
However, the DPP said that it is a case of an adult hurting a child and taking justice into his own hand. During the sentencing, District Judge Christopher convicted Tan on the charge of voluntarily causing hurt.
As per the Singapore law under Section 323 Penal Code, read with Section 334, voluntarily causes hurt, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years, or with fine which may extend to $5,000, or with both.
