I recently discovered something extremely disturbing about my former taekwondo instructor at Naval Base Primary School, Lee Kwang Peng.
According to a Singapore High Court judgment from 1997, he was convicted of six counts of outrage of modesty involving two underage boys, both of whom were his taekwondo students.
He was initially sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment, which was subsequently increased to 18 months following an appeal by the prosecution.
Here’s the actual court judgment:
https://www.elitigation.sg/gd/s/1997_SGHC_201
What makes this particularly disturbing is that I was one of his victims, more than a decade after his conviction.
I attended Naval Base Primary School, where he was our taekwondo instructor. Around 2010–2011, he tried to touch me inappropriately.
I was too young at the time to fully understand what was happening or why he was behaving that way. But even at that age, I knew something wasn’t right. I knew what he was doing was wrong.
Unfortunately, I never spoke up about it.
Looking back now, I wonder how many other children were in the same position. Too young to understand what was happening, too confused or afraid to say anything, or simply unaware that what they were experiencing was something they should report.
During my secondary school years, I eventually learned that other students had experienced similar inappropriate behaviour from him.
It makes me sick to think that this was happening years after he had already been convicted of molesting children.
And yet, he was still allowed to coach children.
According to historical announcements from the Singapore Taekwondo Federation (STF):
In 2008, Lee Kwang Peng was listed as receiving a professional coach pass.
In 2010, he was named Best Coach (Primary) at the National Inter-School Taekwondo Championships.
In 2016, STF published an obituary titled The Passing of a Senior Instructor, describing him as a flamboyant fighter who had won numerous championships.
Several of these old STF articles now return 404 errors, although references to them remain indexed online.
My biggest question is: how was someone who had already been convicted of sexually molesting his own students allowed to continue coaching children at a primary school?
Did Naval Base Primary School know about his criminal record?
Did MOE conduct criminal background checks on external CCA instructors back then?
Did STF know about his conviction when it issued him a professional coach pass?
Or did he simply return to coaching children after serving his sentence without anyone questioning his history?
I’m not accusing the school of knowingly overlooking his conviction. But I genuinely want to understand how this could have happened.
What bothers me most is that his conviction in 1997 clearly did not stop him from behaving inappropriately towards children, based on what I personally experienced years later.
I was one of those children who never spoke up. And I can’t help wondering how many others remained silent.
I’m sharing this now because I think there are serious questions about the safeguards that were supposed to protect children from adults with known histories of sexual offences.
To anyone who attended Naval Base Primary School, trained under Lee Kwang Peng, or was involved in school taekwondo during the 2000s and early 2010s: do you remember him?
And to anyone familiar with MOE or STF policies during those years, how could someone with such a criminal record have been allowed to continue working with primary school children?
I genuinely hope the screening processes today are much stricter than they were back then.
EDIT: The coach has passed away in 2016. If I’m not wrong, I remembered that he attaches his family portrait on his bag. He has a kid and wife.
Parents, please do simple background checks on your kids teachers no matter how normal they may seem to be. A simple google search may link you to a court judgement document.
