Jail and caning for man who downloaded child porn up to twice a week, watched it once every fortnight
Shaffiq Alkhatib
The Straits Times
Aug 20, 2025
A man used a file-sharing platform to download sexually explicit videos involving children, and he did so up to twice a week.
Although he would delete the content after viewing it, authorities later found at least 100 clips of such material in his possession.
The prosecution said that the youngsters in the videos appeared to be under 16 years old and one of them was a victim of "torture, cruelty or physical abuse".
Tan Wei Ting, 31, was sentenced to a year and 11 months' jail, and three strokes of the cane on Aug 20.
The Singaporean had pleaded guilty to one count of being in possession of child sexual abuse material.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Jotham Tay told the court that in either 2020 and 2021, Tan went online and found out how to obtain such content by using a certain peer-to-peer file-sharing program.
He then installed it on his computer and went on to download child pornography.
The DPP said: "The accused used (the program to download such content) about once or twice a week, queueing many pieces of such material onto the... software which would take time to complete its downloads.
"He watched (them) about once every two weeks, and would delete the material that he had watched."
Court documents did not reveal how his offence came to light. But on Feb 22, 2023, police raided his home and seized devices including the computer's central processing unit, which was found to contain the incriminating videos.
Officers arrested Tan, and he was charged in court in 2025.
His bail was set at $15,000 on Aug 20, and he is expected to begin serving his sentence on Aug 25.
