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SINGAPORE \u2013 Former Singapore Idol judge and music producer Ken Lim appealed to the High Court on Sept 11 against his conviction and 13-month jail sentence for molesting a 25-year-old woman.<\/p>\n
He was convicted by a district court in September 2025 of molesting the woman<\/span><\/a> on Nov 23, 2021, at the office of Hype Records, his music production and artiste management company.<\/p>\n His lawyer, Senior Counsel Tan Chee Meng, argued that it was \u201ctotally unsafe for the conviction to hold\u201d, given the \u201cmultitude of contradictions\u201d in the woman\u2019s testimony.<\/p>\n He asserted that her testimony was at odds with what she told her then boyfriend and two close friends, and that it was \u201cimpossible\u201d for her to be groped in the manner she described.<\/p>\n The senior counsel also took issue with a \u201cmissing\u201d segment of CCTV footage of Lim and the woman leaving the office, which he said would have shown that she was behaving normally.<\/p>\n Another of Lim\u2019s lawyers, Samuel Navindran, said the 13-month jail term imposed by the district court was excessive, and that a sentence of about eight months\u2019 jail would be in line with past cases.<\/p>\n Deputy Public Prosecutor James Chew, on the other hand, contended that the woman was completely consistent on the material aspects of what happened at the office and how Lim had molested her.<\/p>\n He argued that the accounts of the boyfriend and two friends were generally consistent with the complainant\u2019s testimony in terms of how she was molested and her demeanour when she confided in them.<\/p>\n The prosecutor said: \u201cThe court is not looking for identical accounts. That\u2019s simply not realistic.\u201d<\/p>\n Chew said the defence\u2019s claim of impossibility was \u201ca complete non-starter\u201d.<\/p>\n The CCTV footage issue was inconsequential and a red herring, as the woman\u2019s account that she pretended as if nothing had happened could already be seen in the footage from other CCTV cameras, he said.<\/p>\n He added that the sentence of 12 months\u2019 jail, with an additional month in lieu of caning, was not manifestly excessive.<\/p>\n Justice Hoo Sheau Peng will give her decision at a later date.<\/p>\n The complainant, who was talent-spotted by Hype Records, met Lim at the office on three occasions between Nov 16, 2021, and Nov 23, 2021. The molestation occurred at the third meeting.<\/p>\n She said at the second meeting on Nov 18, Lim spoke about the traits of being a celebrity, and asked whether she would carry out a certain sex act on a director.<\/p>\n He assured her that this would not actually happen, and the aim was to determine whether she was able to perform under pressure, particularly in scenes requiring her to kiss or carry out certain acts.<\/p>\n Lim also asked whether she would \u201cf*** for a change\u201d, which he claimed was a figure of speech.<\/p>\n They moved on to other topics, and the meeting ended on a positive note, she said.<\/p>\n After the second meeting, Lim sent her messages on Telegram secret chat. One of his messages said, \u201chappy to tie you up, babe\u201d with a kissing or smiling emoji.<\/p>\n When she said she did not appreciate sexual comments, he replied, \u201cno, everything is serious\u201d.<\/p>\n At the third meeting, Lim focused on sacrifice as one of the traits of being a celebrity and asked if she was willing to \u201cf*** for a change\u201d.<\/p>\n She said after initially saying \u201cno\u201d, she eventually said \u201cyes\u201d out of frustration. Lim then sat next to her on the couch, and told her to kiss him, she said.<\/p>\n She said she perceived the demand for a kiss as a test to demonstrate her commitment to sacrifice and her ability to act under pressure.<\/p>\n She said she kissed him but pulled away after a few seconds.<\/p>\n Lim told her to kiss him again, passionately. While they were kissing, he reached under her collar and groped her, she said.<\/p>\n She then told him she had to leave to meet her boyfriend.<\/p>\n She said she was on \u201cautopilot\u201d as they left the office together and went to his car in the carpark. He drove her to the ground floor, and they both got out of his car to wait for her Grab ride to arrive.<\/p>\n She gave Lim a side-hug before she boarded the car.<\/p>\n The next day, Nov 24, she broke down after her manicure went badly. This led her to disclose what occurred to the boyfriend, and later, her two friends.<\/p>\n On Sept 11, Lim\u2019s lawyers argued that the woman had vacillated on her understanding of whether Lim\u2019s discussions with her were literal demands for sex or figurative questions.<\/p>\n Tan said it was incredible for the woman to accede to the kiss when she maintained that she understood them to be hypothetical questions.<\/p>\n He questioned her decision to go for the third meeting despite the questions at the second meeting and the sexual questions over Telegram.<\/p>\n Tan added that her claim that she did not want to be near Lim after he molested her did not gel with her actions in following him to his car and hugging him.<\/p>\n The prosecutor replied that the woman was excited about the opportunity to break into the entertainment sector, and saw Lim as a reputable person.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat had happened until then did not cross the line to the point she had to pull the plug,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The prosecutor added that she gave a clear and reasonable explanation for her seemingly normal behaviour after the incident.<\/p>\n \u201cShe explained she was in a state of shock after bring groped. She was not thinking clearly and was operating on \u2018autopilot\u2019 mode.<\/p>\n \u201cShe tried to keep calm and pretended everything was normal. Her main thought was to get away without alarming him.\u201d<\/p>\n After Lim was sentenced by a district judge in November 2025, the prosecution applied for five remaining charges \u2013 relating to allegations of improper behaviour involving three other women \u2013 to be withdrawn.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2024, Lim was cleared of allegations in a separate trial involving a different woman who accused him of making sexual comments while they were at Hype Records\u2019 premises on July 25, 2012.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE \u2013 Former Singapore Idol judge and music producer Ken Lim appealed to the High Court on Sept 11 against his conviction and 13-month jail…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":85016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/85016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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