Two sweet-talkers lure girls into rape trap

[Gentle Violence]

USING their good looks and sweet-talk, two men befriended young girls and lured the teenagers to a vacant flat to rape them, Sin Chew Daily and China Press reported yesterday.

The dailies quoted police as saying that the men know each other but did not gang-rape the girls.

Their modus operandi is similar to that of the taxi driver who reportedly won the confidence of schoolgirls with his friendly ways.

The dailies said the two so-called handsome men have been arrested for allegedly raping at least five underage girls in a month.

As in the case of the taximan, the reports said the two suspects did the same thing – buying meals for the girls, said to be between 12 and 14 years old before luring them to the flat.

The suspects, it was reported, paid RM50 to RM300 to the girls to remain silent.

The dailies also reported that the police did not rule out the possibility that the suspects, in their 30s and who live in the same area in Ampang, knew the victims before targeting them. Ampang Jaya police received five reports in four days, Sin Chew reported.

The paper said the series of rapes were uncovered when a local resident noticed one of the men bringing different girls to the flats and alerted the family of one of the victims.

> Sin Chew also reported that a prominent scholar of the National University of Singapore (NUS) observed that most Chinese residents in Malaysia prefer to call themselves Malaysians.

Speaking at a forum at the Federal Hotel in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, Prof Wang Gungwu, who is chairman of the East Asian Institute and a professor at NUS, said the younger generation regard themselves as Malaysians first while being Chinese is secondary.

Chinese Malaysians are holding to this belief in growing numbers despite the country’s political landscape being still racial-based, he said.

Sin Chew quoted him as saying that the mentality of the Chinese now is different from that of the pre-independence days some 53 years ago.

“The young Chinese in Malaysia, whether in national schools, vernacular schools or Chinese independent secondary schools, are living as Malaysians,” he said.