Bus driver molested children he fetched to school, including kids with special needs and who were abused

SINGAPORE: A bus driver molested and preyed on abused and special needs children he was tasked with ferrying to schools.

He also asked maids to send him obscene photos of little girls, with one maid complying and sending him sexualised pictures of her employer’s child.

When he was caught, multiple photos of children on his bus route were also found in his possession.

Gary Alexander Tan, 68, pleaded guilty on Monday (Dec 19) to six charges including molestation, showing an obscene object to a young person and insulting a woman’s modesty. Another eight charges will be considered in sentencing.

District Judge Sharmila Sripathy-Shanaz said the gag order would not extend to Tan’s identity as there was strong public interest in identifying sexual offenders.

BEGAN FERRYING CHILDREN FROM 2009

Tan is married, with three adult children.

Around 2009 and 2010, Tan was hired by a kindergarten and a school to ferry children with special needs. When his contract ended in 2012, he continued to ferry the children to and from school under private arrangements with their parents.

From 2011, he ferried a boy to kindergarten in the mornings and to a school in the afternoons. The boy had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder since he was two years old.

Tan found him “cute” and “very soft spoken” and felt “attached” to him, the court heard.

Sometime in 2013 to 2014, the boy was released early from kindergarten and Tan picked him up in his vehicle. He stopped at a car park instead of taking him to school straight away.

The boy, who was then four to six years old, sat in the front passenger seat. Tan kissed the boy’s lips, hugged him and molested him before making the boy perform a sex act on him.

The sexual abuse lasted for half an hour before the boy went to school. Tan repeated the same acts again on a second occasion in 2013 or 2014. 

The offences were initially reported when the boy began to display sexualised behaviour, court documents stated.

However, the boy was non-verbal due to his autism and unable to articulate the offences committed against him by Tan.

FERRYING ALLEGEDLY ABUSED CHILDREN

In 2017, Tan then worked as a school bus driver ferrying children who were allegedly abused. Some had been taken from parents who had abused them, and made to stay with other relatives.

Some of them had been taken away from their parents who had abused them and were made to stay with other relatives.

Tan was interviewed by the company and briefed on the conduct expected of their drivers. He agreed to the details, and knew the abused children were under care arrangements.

Tan was hired based on his “positive attitude”. He also offered to work extra hours if needed.

In January 2017, he targeted an eight-year-old girl who had allegedly been physically abused and was staying with other relatives.

While ferrying the girl to and from school on Jan 12, 2017, Tan parked his van at an open-air car park. 

He gave the girl a drink and his iPad to play with before molesting her. The girl refused to remove her skorts – a combination of shorts and a skirt.

Tan videoed himself molesting the girl.

Tan molested the girl again on another occasion that month, kissing her lips and telling her that he missed her.

He told her he wanted her to be “happy” with him and said what happened between them was “between you and me”. He said he loved her and asked if she loved him, but the girl said she did not know and giggled.

He also showed the girl a photo of himself in underwear, and a photo of a maid named Emy performing a sex act on him.

Photos of the girl asleep in Tan’s van, along with photos of other children he was ferrying, were later discovered in his phone.

Once, before the girl’s grandfather came to pick her up, Tan told her: “Don’t tell anybody”.

OFFENCES INVOLVING MAIDS

The sex act with the maid Emy was performed in his van between 2016 and 2017. He met her during the course of his work, as he befriended several maids when he started ferrying children in 2009.

On May 4, 2016, Tan called another maid named Ellah and asked if she would like some food. Together with her employer’s young daughter, Ellah went to a car park where Tan had parked his car.

While Ellah ate behind Tan’s van, Tan volunteered to take care of the employer’s daughter. He took the girl to the front cabin of the van and took an upskirt photo of her for “his own fetish” as he got a “thrill” out of it, the prosecutor said.

He also took multiple photos of himself kissing the girl on her lips. The maid later retrieved the girl without knowing what had happened.

Of the other maids he had befriended, Tan asked two of them to send him photos of their private parts. They obliged.

He also asked them to take and send him photos of little girls’ private parts. One of the maids declined, but Emy, who was in a sexual relationship with Tan, complied.

On 22 occasions, Tan instigated Emy into taking and sending him photos of her employer’s daughter bathing, naked or in her underwear. In some photos, the girl was made to assume certain poses.

Emy also sent Tan 51 photos of another naked pre-pubescent girl and three photos of her employer’s pre-pubescent son.

Other than these offences, Tan also took upskirt videos of women and girls in various places in Singapore.

In 2006, he also molested the daughter of a woman he was having an affair with. The girl was between three and five years old.

Tan’s offences came to light when the eight-year-old abuse victim told her aunt and grandparents what happened. Her mother lodged a report in Jan 2017, and Tan was arrested.

He initially denied the offences and had deleted incriminating photos from his phone. However, the photos were retrieved by investigators and he was confronted with the material.

The eight-year-old girl said she was very scared about the incidents and ashamed to talk about them. She also had nightmares of people attacking her or her family.

PROSECUTOR SEEKS JAIL

Deputy Public Prosecutor Chong Kee En sought approximately 13 years’ to 15 years’ jail for Tan, inclusive of jail in lieu of caning. 

He said Tan’s offences were “truly sick and twisted”, committed over a long period and involving a “horrendous abuse of trust”. 

There were a total of seven child victims and five adult victims across his offences.

For the boy with autism, Tan had taken advantage of that fact as well as his non-verbal nature.

The boy was only able to tell authorities what happened last year, said Mr Chong.

He called Tan “the stereotypical nightmare of any parent who has a young child”.

“Behind the facade of a cheerful, kindly and garrulous elderly bus driver hid the insatiable lust of a depraved sexual predator,” he said.

While Tan was not diagnosed with paedophilia, Mr Chong said it was clear that Tan was sexually attracted to children.

Defence lawyer Joshua Tong asked for a total of about nine years’ jail, inclusive of jail in lieu of caning.

He argued for fewer sentences to be run consecutively, saying his client was old and would be spending much of his life in prison.

To this, Judge Sripathy-Shanaz said: “Wouldn’t it be somewhat perverse for an offender to seek (a lower) sentence on account of his advanced age, if his advanced age at the time of sentencing is due to his success in having kept his criminal offences concealed for a significant period of time?”

Mr Tong said he did not have a clear response to this, at that point in time.

The prosecutor Mr Chong said Tan was physically fit enough to abuse young children yet now asking for leniency due to his old age.

“He’s not truly sorry for his offences, he’s sorry about the position he is in now,” he said, adding that there were older offenders who received longer jail terms.

The judge said she needed more time to consider the sentence and adjourned sentencing to January.

CNA understands that by the time Tan’s offences were uncovered, the maids involved could no longer be traced.