An online petition has been started calling for a harsher sentence to be imposed on Joshua Robinson, the 39-year-old American expatriate in Singapore who has been jailed four years for sexually assaulting two 15-year-old girls and filming the assaults.

The petition is started by one Sarah Woon, who claims to be a close family friend of the six-year-old girl who Robinson showed an explicit video to at a gym where the child's father was training at.

On March 2, 2017, Robinson had pleaded guilty to nine charges in total.

These include: Three for sexually assaulting the girls, five for making and possessing obscene films and one for showing an obscene film to a six-year-old girl.

The police seized 5,902 obscene films, including 321 films of child pornography when they raided his home.

This is believed to be the largest haul of child pornography seized from an individual in Singapore.

The father of the girl subsequently spoke out about the sentence in a Facebook post.

The petition read:

Is this the message our Singapore Government People's Action Party is intending to send worldwide: "Spray paint our city or slander our government officials and you get it worse off than if you rape and sexually abuse our children"?

[...]

As a parent and an early childhood educator advocating for the voiceless in our country (and children everywhere, with the fact that upon release this pedophile could be anywhere around the world, abusing his mixed martial arts trainer's credentials) I find this unacceptable and absolutely intolerable. Unfortunately, the 6 year old in this traumatic case is a daughter of a close friend and it absolutely breaks my heart and those of all our friends and family.

The petition states that it will be delivered to several parties, which include the Attorney-General's Chambers, the People's Action Party, law minister K. Shanmugam and prime minister Lee Hsien Loong.

Within 12 hours of being online on March 5, 2017, the petition received more than 1,000 signatures.

Reasons given for signing the petition unanimously condemned what has been perceived by the public to be a relatively lenient sentence:

Four years and no cane for not only abusing underaged girls but filming it as well is nothing short of a bad joke.

Society needs to send a strong message to deter such barbaric & sickening behaviors.

Even vandalism warrants caning. What happening to our society if there's no tougher measures.

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Related article:

Father of 6-year-old girl preyed on by convicted sex fiend speaks out

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