I lost my virginity to NUS law prof: Darinne Ko
UPDATED 9:50pm 11 January 2013. (Added more details from Darinne Ko's testimony Thursday)
A young lawyer testifying against her former law professor in a sex-for-grades case said in court Thursday that she lost her virginity to him.
Darinne Ko Wen Hui, 23, said that on 24 July 2010, when she was a student at National University of Singapore (NUS), she and associate law professor Tey Tsun Hang, 41, had sex for the first time.
She had met him when he had been her teacher for a module and they had gotten to know each other when she helped him do research for a book he was writing. She was doing her internship and was no longer his student at the time their sexual relationship started, the court heard.
"Whilst we were kissing one thing led to another and we slept together on his couch. It was my first time and it was over pretty quickly," she said.
"On the same day, when I got home, I found blood on my underwear which I informed him about. I received a reply about one hour later saying 'I'm sorry'. I did not reply to that SMS, nor did I ask what he was sorry about," she said.
Tey, a former district judge, was charged in court last year for having corruptly obtained sexual gratification from Ko on two occasions in July 2010,when she had been a student at NUS, as inducement for showing favour in assessing her academic performance.
In the other charges, Tey allegedly obtained from Ko from May to July that same year a Mont Blanc pen worth S$740, two tailor-made shirts valued at S$236.20, an iPod Touch worth S$160 and payment of a bill amounting to S$1,278.60. There are a total of six charges in all.
Tey is married and has one daughter.
Class
Ko, a former Raffles Girls' School and Raffles Institution (then Raffles Junior College) student, came to know Tey in January 2010 when she became his student in his Equity and Trusts class.
In April 2010, she assisted him in carrying out research for his book on the same subject. Thanking her for compiling the research for his book, he took her out for their first lunch together.
Ko said they seemed to have a "connection" during lunch and thereafter communicated via chat.
When Ko's academic results were to be released, Tey revealed her results to her beforehand, and also disclosed her class ranking of 17th place. He then took her out on another lunch.
They talked electronically when not face-to-face and conversation topics became more personal, moving from law to his personal encounters in his career. Eventually, they would meet two to three times a week for lunch and every Saturday at the office, where they would listen to music. For weekday lunch he would pick her up at the office she was working at as an intern then.
"I liked him. I liked spending time with him. When I was not with him, I wanted to be," Ko said.
When Tey lost a pen, she bought him the $740-dollar Montblanc pen.
In June 2010, her boyfriend found out about her relationship with Tey when he logged onto her email account and saw their online conversations.
She considered cutting contact with Tey on the request of her boyfriend but decided not to because she really missed the law professor.
She then bought Tey a tailored shirt and an iPod Touch on which she loaded many songs.
"More than anything, I told him I wanted it to remind him of me when I left (for an exchange program at Duke University in August 2010)," she said.
After her first sexual encounter with Tey, she slept with him a second time on 28 July 2010.
Asked why, she said it was because she loved him and believed they were in love.
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