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SINGAPORE \u2013 The unresolved inconsistencies in the testimony of a woman who accused online content creator Lev Panfilov of raping her gave the Court of Appeal reason to doubt her account of a violent sexual assault.<\/p>\n
But neither her account of a rape nor Panfilov\u2019s account of consensual sex was more believable than the other, the court said in written grounds issued on Nov 5.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn such a situation, the court could only be guided by the \u2018cornerstone of our criminal jurisprudence\u2019 that, where the evidence may lead to two equally reasonable results, that suffices to establish reasonable doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a 92-page judgment, the court, comprising Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, Justice Ang Cheng Hock and Justice Sushil Nair, set out its detailed reasons for acquitting Panfilov on Sept 2<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n The woman had accused Panfilov of sexually assaulting her in his bedroom on Jan 12, 2021.<\/p>\n He was then a scriptwriter and actor with YouTube channel Wah!Banana. She had worked as a model and actress and was trying to branch into comedy.<\/p>\n They \u201cmatched\u201d on Tinder in early January 2021. A few days later, on Jan 12, they met at a restaurant at Robertson Quay, and made their separate ways to Panfilov\u2019s condominium unit, which he shared with flatmates.<\/p>\n They sat on Panfilov\u2019s bed to work on her script. For about 1\u00bd hours, they talked about writing characters and watched videos that they found funny.<\/p>\n On Jan 18, the woman lodged a police report alleging that he had raped and sexually assaulted her.<\/p>\n Panfilov maintained that they had consensual sex. He suggested that she made the police report because she was not happy that he later \u201cghosted\u201d her, referring to a situation in which one person cuts off communication with another.<\/p>\n He was initially sentenced to 11\u00bd years\u2019 jail and 12 strokes of the cane in May 2025<\/span><\/a>, after a High Court judge convicted him on two counts of rape, one count of sexual assault by penetration, and one count of outrage of modesty.<\/p>\n On Sept 2, he won his appeal and was acquitted of all four charges.<\/p>\n In its written grounds on Nov 5, the court went into detail on the various inconsistencies and unresolved questions.<\/p>\n One of them related to whether the woman had screamed during the alleged assault.<\/p>\n When she was medically examined on Jan 18, 2021, she told the doctor that she had screamed and only stopped because Panfilov forcefully prevented her from doing so.<\/p>\n On the other hand, her testimony in court implied that she made a deliberate choice not to scream because, among other reasons, she was fearful of him.<\/p>\n The court rejected the prosecution\u2019s characterisation of this as a \u201cminor inconsistency\u201d.<\/p>\n The change in her testimony \u201csuggested that the complainant may have embellished the facts\u201d and gave force to the defence\u2019s theory that she abandoned her original account because of a belated realisation that it could not be reconciled with the evidence of others in the unit on the night of the incident.<\/p>\n More to come.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE \u2013 The unresolved inconsistencies in the testimony of a woman who accused online content creator Lev Panfilov of raping her gave the Court of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97921,"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-97920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97920","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=97920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/97921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=97920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=97920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=97920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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