Customers are responsible for confirming that any prostitutes in Singapore they patronize are legal adults. It seems the local law requires that they even check identification. While prostitution is legal in Singapore, paying for sex with a minor certainly is not. This report from The Star Online tells you all you need to know about the subject.
HE TURNS 56 today, but Yeo Joo Meng will be celebrating his birthday behind bars after he was sentenced to four months in jail for having sex with an underage Vietnamese prostitute.
The warehouse assistant yesterday became the third man to be convicted of sleeping with the 16-year-old. Yeo pleaded guilty to paying her $100 for their tryst at a Geylang hotel.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Sabrina Choo told the court he met the girl at a coffee shop in the Geylang area in late 2010.
Noticing that she looked young, he asked for her age and she replied that she was 20. He told her she looked only 18 or 19 and asked to see her passport, but she refused.
They had sex in July last year after she quoted him $100. The pair went to a hotel called The Sunflower for their tryst.
Yeo was arrested on Aug 18, about 2 1/2 weeks after the girl was picked up for suspected vice activities in Geylang.
Pleading for leniency, lawyer Andrew Tan said his client was gullible and believed her when she said she was older than 18, the legal age of consent for prostitutes in Singapore. He added that by pleading guilty, Yeo had brought closure to the case and saved the court’s valuable time.
A second charge was taken into consideration. Yeo could have been jailed for up to seven years, fined or both.
Former Singapore Land Authority executive Kum Chin Tiong, 57, has already been jailed for nine months for having sex with the girl. Security consultant Winson Chan Swee Teck, 49, was sentenced to four months.
A report on a completely different case seems to confirm that the onus for checking the age of prostitutes in Singapore falls on the customers.
Prostitution is generally allowed here, but having paid sex with a girl under 18 is a crime under laws that were tightened in 2008. The maximum penalty is a seven-year jail term and a fine.
Women who work in Geylang’s legal and regulated brothels can be expected to be of legal age. Those venues are supposedly visited by government inspectors and authorized to operate by law. Some even argue that they offer the only legal prostitution in Singapore.
I am not a legal expert, especially when it comes to Singapore. I do know that adult men should avoid women who are not of age. That should go without saying. These reports are still notable.
Damn I’ll keep this in mind, plan on visiting Singapore in a few months. Thanks again Rockit
No problem. Cheers!
No more info about Singapore???
They say patience is a virtue. Cheers.
Nice work, though it was a surprise to see just one post in the Singapore section. Could you state how does prostitution in Singapore compare to that in Japan. I have earlier been to Japan and need to go to Singapore for few weeks for work.
I could not find any good sites or blogs about prostitution in Singapore while in the case of Japan i found many. Though Japan has some problems with foreigners but i experienced that the service, especially the more expensive ones, were quite organized and great. Singapore however has prostitution as legal but i could not find any online sites for booking escorts or delivering them to a room or hotel.
I can only do so many things at a time. There will be more info on Singapore coming sometime soon. Prostitution is legal is certain situations but not others. There are plenty of massage parlors, KTVs and escorts around but they run a minor risk of having problems with the police. The same goes for the numerous street walkers around Geylang and the numerous women who haunt Orchard Towers (also known as the “four floors of whores”) at night. Generally it all seems to be tolerated though. The authorized brothels in Geylang seem to be in tune with the law and fine and dandy with the powers that be. Thanks for the comments. Cheers.
Cops in Singapore target foreigners, and pimps are in league with them. Pimps will show a girl (laneways in lorengs 8-12 mostly) and say something like “very young, very pretty” etc. Foreigner pays money, pimp tips cops, cops raid hotel, arrest foreigner, bring reporters and photographers. Cops look good, pimp keeps in with cops, girl is back out on street servicing locals in an hour. Best to negotiate with girls directly without pimp – and if she looks too young to be true, no doubt she is.
Thanks for the comment. I haven’t heard many instances of this sort of thing happening but then again there usually aren’t a ton of foreigners in Geylang. When the cops do come through the women quickly disappear from the streets and the only thing left are the dozens of legal shops that line the streets. The thing that I don’t understand is how they arrested a guy for something that supposedly happened weeks earlier. Did they follow him for two weeks or what? Cheers.
Hey rockit. To answer your question, the reason why the police was able to track down the guy who had sex with the underage lady was because every patron of hotels in Geylang is required to register with his ID AND the ID of the lady (or any other hotels known to provide transit rate rooms). And that too is usually how they came to know that the lady was below 18 years old.
When a guy approaches the counter to get a room, he’s asked if there is any lady accompanying him. Even if he lies about it, no girls are allowed to go into any of the rooms at a later stage if they don’t register themselves either. I suppose this protocol was set up to protect hotel owners who might house underage ladies in their room.
Cheers.
Thank you for the explanation. Sorry for the late reply. Cheers.