Court of Appeal acquits ex-Wah!Banana actor of rape citing inconsistencies from alleged victim

SINGAPORE: A former Wah!Banana actor who has been in jail after being convicted of raping a Tinder date has been acquitted of all charges against him.

The Court of Appeal on Wednesday (Sep 2) overturned the convictions against 30-year-old Russian national Lev Panfilov of four charges comprising rape, sexual assault and molestation. 

The encounter occurred at his condominium unit on Jan 12, 2021, and he admitted to the acts but said they were consensual.

Delivering the judgment, Justice Sushil Nair said a number of inconsistencies had arisen in the testimony given by the alleged victim or complainant.

When viewed collectively, the inconsistencies gave rise to a reasonable doubt in the prosecution's case, and the woman is not an unusually convincing witness.

This standard is required for a conviction in a he-said-she-said case like this where no other evidence is available.

Panfilov, a Singapore permanent resident, took off his glasses on hearing the verdict and broke into a smile, later smiling at someone in the packed public gallery.

Justice Pang Khang Chau, who had heard the trial, had convicted Panfilov of the charges and sentenced him to 11-and-a-half years' jail and 12 strokes of the cane. The caning had not been carried out.

REASONS FOR ACQUITTAL

Speaking on behalf of a three-judge coram comprising himself, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon and Justice Ang Cheng Hock, Justice Nair said the complainant's testimony had inconsistencies that undermined the core elements of her evidence.

First, the woman told a doctor that she had screamed during the alleged assault, but later said in court that she did not scream although she attempted to.

The doctor's account was based on contemporaneous notes she took while interviewing the woman.

The court accepted the accuracy of the doctor's record and said this gives rise to an inconsistency that is material and suggests the woman may have embellished her account.

Second, the only physical evidence offered by the prosecution was a pair of blood-stained underwear.

Justice Nair said a reasonable doubt arises as to whether it was the underwear she had worn that night. First, it was dug out of her laundry basket six days after the incident, during which she had her period.

There is no evidence that the blood is not menstrual.

Panfilov had also described the underwear worn by the woman that night, and the prosecution did not put it to him that his description was false.

The examining doctor also did not find any wound on the woman that would have caused the amount of blood found on the exhibit.

Justice Nair said even if the woman had worn that underwear that night, the source of the blood on it was an unresolved question.

The inconsistencies and unresolved questions with regard to the underwear are material and "strike at the very heart of the prosecution's case", which is that the exhibit was physical evidence of the violent assault by Panfilov.

The woman's inability to remember requesting a memo from another doctor also goes against her credibility, and the court found it strange that she had no recollection of this.

They also found it "puzzling" that the woman initially hesitated to make a police report due to lack of evidence, when she would have known about the existence of the bloodied underwear.

Panfilov's appeal lawyers, Mr Johannes Hadi and Mr Eugene Thuraisingam, had charged that the woman had fabricated the evidence in the form of the underwear.

While the prosecution had said that the woman was only reminded of the existence of the underwear when her mother told her to bring along the clothes she had worn to the police station, Justice Nair said this did not square with her vivid testimony on breaking down shortly after the assault at the sight of the bloodied underwear.

The complainant's evidence thus falls short of the unusually convincing standard and cannot overcome the lack of corroborative evidence, said Justice Nair.

He said there were other issues that troubled the court, such as the gap in time when Panfilov left the woman on the bed to go to the bathroom.

The woman had testified to trying to leave the room or break free at least twice before she was purportedly pushed onto the bed.

Justice Nair acknowledged that victims of sexual assault can have a variety of reactions to assault and some may understandably freeze.

However, seen with the rest of her testimony, the woman remaining on the bed fully dressed instead of leaving was at odds with her evidence.

The gap in time is more consistent with a consensual encounter than a violent non-consensual one, said Justice Nair.

The woman had been cross-examined for 13 days by Panfilov's then-lawyers, Mr Anil Balchandani and Mr Ashwin Ganapathy.

The trial judge had agreed with the prosecution that an increase in the sentence was called for given the manner in which the woman was cross-examined by the defence, as well as Panfilov's attempt to leave the country without permission while on bail.

At the close of the hearing, the court granted a discharge amounting to an acquittal for an outstanding charge of obstruction of justice.

It also dismissed the prosecution's separate appeal against the sentence imposed, since Panfilov had now been acquitted of all charges.