That’s what I think of this whole sorry affair.
First of all, prostitution is NOT illegal in Singapore. The workers must all be 18 years or older. Clients are free to patronise their services without running foul of the law.
Before anyone asks or accuses me, no I have never, and will never, patronise these kinds of services. I am not “defending” these men because I am “also a customer”. I can think of better ways to spend my $50 or $100 on things that will last me longer than 30 mins (or whatever time is alloted per session).
Forget for a moment that this case involved sex. Let’s break it down into business practices and business law.
The girl is providing a service. The law says she must be 18 to provide this service. She lied. Clients started to purchase her service. Later they (the clients) are in the media spotlight simply because the service provider had lied about her age, hence breaking the law unintentionally.
As an example, I have a product which I claim to be a 20 Terabyte external harddisk for sale. It is rectangular in shape and pretty heavy. Customers buy my product, plug it into their computers but it doesn’t work. When they open up the casing, they find out I put a brick inside the case instead of hard disks. So now, who’s at fault, me or my customers?
Should the media focus on my customers for being stupid to purchase my product? Or should they focus instead on me, the evil vendor that pawned his clearly-fake product off as the real thing?
In business, this is considered FRAUD.
The media should instead focus on the real crux of the problem here – that it is SO EASY for underaged girls to enter this industry, and commit FRAUD (whether intentionally or unintentionally). When you patronise a vendor by buying their product or service, you as the customer trust the vendor that the product is at least what it claims to be, and that you should be able to use it for the purpose you purchased it for without any fear of legal repercussions. When the vendor cheats you of the product or service, the provider or company should be held accountable, and reparations should be made to the VICTIMS.
Yes we can’t control the Internet. There is an outcry of people saying these men are bad, they are evil, they exploited a 17 yr old helpless girl. Remember this – these men didn’t stalk her on Facebook, didn’t convince her to come out under false pretenses, didn’t rape her. SHE OFFERED HER SEXUAL SERVICES AND WELCOMED CLIENTS TO PATRONISE HER. That is already mis-representation. Sometimes people just follow the crowd and never think further into the problem. This is partly the fault of our education system – we were never encouraged to think for ourselves… all our exams and tests are based on rote memory.
I just wish the media (and social media) would stop focusing on these “big bad men” who are actually victims of a CRIME (ie, business fraud) and focus instead on the perpetrator – the girl that lied about her age to work in this (questionable) industry.
