Victims urged to come forward over tuition centre rape case

Segambut MP Lim Lip Eng has urged for those with information about a tuition teacher who had supposedly raped his student to come forward.

He said the history teacher is also believed to have sexually assaulted other students, and he encouraged them to come forward as well.

“If you yourself or your friends have suffered a similar fate in the hands of this or other tuition teachers, please go and lodge a police report, or come to me, or even go to the nearest political party.

“Lastly, I advise the friends, the colleagues, and family members of this suspect – after reading this news – please convince him to surrender to the Shah Alam district police headquarters, or whoever has information on his whereabouts, please give it to the police or give it to me,” he said in a press conference at his service centre in Segambut today.

Lim said he is acting as the lawyer of a former student of a prominent tuition centre in Kota Kemuning, where the alleged crime took place on several occasions in 2012.

At 14 years old, the victim was an underaged girl at the time and was taking history lessons at the centre.

After a class in February that year, Lim said the teacher told the entire class to leave except for the victim, including the victim's elder brother who was told to wait outside.

The teacher then reportedly made sexual advances towards the victim, including to molest her, but she resisted and the teacher let her go.

On the following week in March however, the teacher again told the class of about 40 students to leave and then was alleged to have raped the victim in the classroom over a period of about 15 minutes.

“She was so scared. She didn't know what to do and she was afraid of losing this teacher, because he is very famous in teaching history and she was very poor (in that subject).

“So the rape happened another two more times,” Lim said, adding that the incidents went on until May 2012 when it inexplicably stopped.

The victim continued to study at the tuition centre until she sat for her PMR examination in 2013.

Malaysiakini is withholding the identity of the teacher and the tuition centre involved, pending comment.

'Her friends would not believe her'

Lim said that apart from being afraid of losing the teacher's tutelage, the victim did not report the incident because her friends would not believe her.

Instead, he said her friends believed that she was lying, and that the teacher would not commit such a crime against his students.

In addition, when the victim informed another teacher working at the tuition centre about the incidents, she was told to keep quiet.

She kept her silence until this year, where she related her experience to a friend she met online and was encouraged to tell her parents.

Lim said the victim did so on Oct 18, and the parents then approached him for help on the following day.

However, it was decided that she should lodge the police report only after the victim - now 17 - sits for the SPM examination, so as not to interrupt her studies.

The police report was lodged at the Shah Alam district police headquarters on Dec 18, and copies of the report had been distributed to the press.

Meanwhile, the victim had been taken for medical examination and counselling.

Lim said the victim is believed to be not the only one, because the teacher appeared to be calm when making sexual advances against the student.

Moreover, the victim claimed that there had been rumours about the same teacher molesting other students.

He said that as of yesterday evening, he was informed by the investigating officer that the police have gone to the tuition centre and approached the suspect's family members, but could not locate the suspect himself.

The last time the suspect was heard of, he said, was on Dec 21 when the suspect went to the victim's home and asked to meet the father to “settle” the case.

Only the victim's elder brother was home at the time, who told the teacher to see Lim instead and mentioned Lim's phone number to him twice.

In a video of the purported exchange between the teacher and the brother, the teacher complained that he didn't have anything to take down the number, but the brother retorted: “That's none of my business.”

The teacher then walked away quietly after the exchange.

For now, Lim further encouraged parents to pick up their children from tuition centres on time. -Mkini