A Hong Kong court sentenced a former teacher on Monday to 18 months in prison for molesting a student, aged 15 at the time, on two occasions in 2020.
District Judge Gary Lam Kar-yan described defendant Cheng Hon-sze’s case as serious and said there was no room for a reduced sentence, even if it was a first offence.
Cheng, now 32, was sentenced at Tsuen Wan Court after being found guilty of two counts of indecent assault for groping the student and making her perform an obscene act in May and October 2020.
He was cleared of seven other counts of indecent assault as the court ruled the girl on those occasions had not expressly refused the defendant’s advances or that the acts involved were not considered inherently indecent.
The defendant earlier admitted to having repeatedly engaged in intimate acts with the victim in the school’s music storage room and other locations.
Lam sentenced Cheng to one year in jail for each count of indecent assault, while ordering that the prison terms be served as a partially consecutive sentence, bringing the overall period down to 18 months.
