Hello,
I would like to highlight my experiences with a local french tutor in Singapore. I will not put his full name here as I am afraid of any unforeseen repercussions that may occur. All I can say is that his name is similar to that of the main character of the Flintstones. I would limit my opinions of him and instead state the series of events that happened. I would also caution parents who have young children to please have adult supervision whenever he is at your house to teach your children.
My friend and I first met him 3 years ago at a local community centre in Singapore. After the first year, he decided to teach my friend and I privately. Things were alright at first but sporadically, he would start talking about our weight and the way we dressed. We took into stride that this is casual conversation but things took a bad turn when he personally whatsapped me inappropriately. When I decided to divert the conversation to the group chat with my friend as I was starting to feel uncomfortable, he realised that I must have told my friend about it. This resulted in him getting angry and even when I messaged him personally on whatsapp that I did not like the way he was speaking to me, he got defensive. He would try to put the blame on me and say how I cannot tell him what he can or cannot say even though it concerns me. Because of his defensive behaviour where he became even more rude to me, my friend tried to defend me but that only instigated him further and resulted in him bad mouthing her in front of me in every possible way from her clothes to her attitude to her looks (criticizing her display pictures on whatsapp) and trying to get me to agree with him.
Subsequently, after this incident, every French lesson went downhill from there. We would spend 3/4 of the lessons listening to his rants about how bad we were in french, how many high-leveled friends he has and how he sends them and his other students dirty jokes and because they dont respond to it or rather reply briefly, he thinks his behaviour is acceptable. I would like to mention some of the things that he has said, which we found unnerving and inappropriate for a teacher: he has said to me ( in person) during a phone conversation, " why would I go after you when I have other better looking students". He has mentioned to me how he thinks this doesn't constitute harassment because he has not physically touched me. We were sitting in the community centre having a lesson in the area overlooking the swimming pool and he mentioned "haiyah, only children, no fun".
This man would mention to us how he has many Indian expat clients and he teaches their children enrolled in the International Schools, French. He has mentioned in our presence before how there was this one time one of the young girls in primary school would be touchy with him and how as a man he could not like it.
In the end, we had to terminate his service and reported him to the community centre where we first met. The community centre did reply and said that they would keep our complaint in their records for future reference because he is no longer employed with them.
I would like to urge parents to be really careful and to have adult supervision in the presence of this man at all times if you still wish to engage his services. This has been a really bad experience for me and it did not occur to me to approach this forum to caution parents earlier.
