He had been sneaking peaks at adult erotic photos on the family computer. Nevertheless, Matthew did have an embarrassing confession. "When they asked me have you ever looked up or uploaded or downloaded erotic images of minors, I was just taken aback and…I said, 'No,'" says Matthew. Yahoo monitors chat rooms for suspicious content and reported that child porn was uploaded from the computer at the Bandys' home address. According to the warrant, nine images of young girls in suggestive poses were found on the Bandy family computer. Greg Bandy was handed the search warrant and informed that the central suspect was Matthew. "And then there police officers with guns pointed at me, telling me to get downstairs."
"The first thing I thought was, someone's trying to break in our house," Matthew said. However, Deputy Public Prosecutor Gabriel Lim asked for a sentence of 18 months as a general deterrence against such crimes involving children who were vulnerable to sexual exploitation.įor engaging in a sexual act with a person under the age of 14, Aslam could have been jailed for up to 20 years and fined or caned.Police officers stormed into the house with guns pointed. Mr Yeo also told the court that the victim had initiated the second meeting and had told Aslam that he needed money again and gave him a discount of $30 from the initial price. "This was the second time the victim misrepresented his age and my client had no reason to suspect he was under 16 or even under 14," said Mr Yeo, asking the court for a sentence of 12 months' jail for his client.
He said Aslam also tried to verify the victim's age by asking him how old he was, and the victim replied that he was 17. The victim had indicated on his profile in the app that he was 18.
Mr Yeo added that the app has age verification safeguards in place, where users have to verify and confirm they are above 18 when registering for an account. In his mitigation, Aslam's lawyer Nichol Yeo said that his client had believed that the victim was at least 17 years old. The boy did not know he was caught on video. This time, Aslam used his mobile phone to film the act. They met about a week later at Aslam's home where he again had sex with the boy. They undressed and sniffed "poppers", which is an illicit psychoactive drug used to relax muscles, and Aslam had sex with the boy while wearing a condom. The boy had a small stature and youthful look, but Aslam made no attempt to verify his age. On Jan 30, 2018, they met for the first time when the victim went to Aslam's home. This was the only time he asked the boy his age. The boy's father reported the matter to the police last February when he learnt that his son had engaged in sexual activities.Ĭourt documents showed that before they met, Aslam had asked the victim for his age and the latter claimed he was 17. The court heard that some time in mid-January last year, Aslam sent the victim a message via the app requesting sex.Īfter an exchange of messages discussing the price for the act, it was agreed that Aslam would pay the boy, who cannot be named due to a gag order, $130. On Friday (July 26), the former horse racing jockey with the Singapore Turf Club was jailed for 18 months for engaging in a sexual act with a person under the age of 14. He looked too small and young to be a 17-year-old but Malik Erasmus Aslam, now 41, did little to verify his age before he proceeded to have sex with the boy he had met on gay dating mobile application Grindr.Īslam also admitted to making an obscene film of their sex act when they met a second time.