S'pore man, 39, who stalked former co-worker for 5 years blasted by judge for harassing victim during trial

A man who stalked his former co-worker for five years continued to harass her during his trial, during which he spent seven days of cross-examination asking the victim irrelevant questions while representing himself.

Lucas Seng Yong Yi's also behaved inappropriately towards the Prosecution's witnesses, asking them scandalous and irrelevant questions.

Seng, 39, was convicted of three charges of stalking under the Protection from Harassment Act and sentenced to 18 months’ jail by a district judge in late 2024. 

"Outrageous" conduct during trial

Justice Vincent Hoong dismissed Seng's appeal against his conviction and sentence on Jul. 30.

He also blasted Seng’s behaviour in court in a written decision on Aug. 8.

The High Court judge called Seng's behaviour conduct at the trial "outrageous" and agreed with the lower court that Seng’s deplorable conduct during the trial was an aggravating factor in the sentencing.

Firstly, Seng engaged in victim-blaming. He said the victim had brought some of the acts of harassment on herself because she uploaded her resume on LinkedIn.

Secondly, he asked the Prosecution’s witnesses scandalous and irrelevant questions at length during cross-examination.

One example was Seng alleging that a male witness was homosexual and was lying in court about being the woman’s boyfriend. Seng also asked the man if knew the victim’s “cup size” as well as whether he liked “sexy men”.

On top of that, he asked the victim’s cousin if he could kiss her. 

Seng also made baseless allegations that the prosecution, the police and various witnesses were fabricating evidence and conspiring against him.

Hoong said: "His conduct at the trial wasted judicial time and resources, caused annoyance to witnesses (including the victim), and undermined the sanctity of the proceedings. It also evidenced a clear lack of remorse."

The trial judge had repeatedly told Seng that certain lines of questioning were irrelevant to the issues to be determined. 

"By frequently raising scandalous allegations without any reasonable grounds, the Appellant only harmed his own case by demonstrating that he did not have a cogent defence that cast doubt on the Prosecution’s evidence and had to resort to accusing the Prosecution’s witnesses of unfounded conspiracies against him," said Hoong.

Five-year torture

Between 2015 and 2020, Seng sent the victim over 3,000 text messages, ordered sample products to be delivered to her residence, and mailed her his court papers to pressure her into dropping criminal charges against him.

Seng said he believed he was the woman's boyfriend and formed this impression because of certain text messages the victim had sent him, and because she supposedly accepted certain gifts that he had sent her. 

Hoong said Seng could not have reasonably believed he was in a romantic relationship with the victim because she had sent him multiple text messages in which she clearly stated that she was not romantically interested in him.

For example, she sent him a text "Since you are so great (not) at picking up signs and signals, then why haven’t you picked up the sign that I have zero interest in you."

Hoong added that even if Seng thought that he was the victim’s boyfriend, his text messages to her would not be reasonable because of the victim's unequivocal demands for Seng to stop messaging her. One such text she sent him was "Please stop your nonsense."

Seng thus had no reasonable basis to believe that he could continue sending the victim text messages, said Hoong.

Top photo via Unsplash