'I was scared': Chinese tourist says Sabah diving instructor kissed her without consent

It was an underwater kiss that took her by surprise.

A young Chinese tourist was holidaying in Sabah, Malaysia last Friday (May 5) when she found her scuba diving instructor diving into her DMs instead.

Besides kissing her cheek without consent during the diving session, he even hit her up through WeChat after it was over, the 24-year-old woman said in a Douyin video.

Her video, as well as the screenshots of her text messages with the accused, went viral on Facebook after they were reposted by Malaysian community groups.

One of the screenshots showed an email where she recounted what happened that day.

"On May 5, I went to Mataking Island (an island off Semporna) to scuba dive with an instructor, and when we were underwater, he kissed me," she wrote, adding that she attached evidence of the kiss.

"He also added me on WeChat where he'd ask me when I was leaving Semporna, and I told him I was returning to China the following day."

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The freelance instructor continued to message her even after she had gone back ashore, asking for her hotel details and asking her out in the process, she said.

Rejecting his advances, the woman told him she needed to follow her tour group around — but the man did not seem to back down.

"He continued to text me afterwards, saying that he'd love to spend a night with me alone in his car," she wrote. "I was scared."

In her email, she mentioned that she received a separate WeChat message from the diving instructor who tried to make her twist the narrative by saying she had asked him to kiss her.

"I felt that the diving company wouldn't do anything about the issue because they were done providing the services, and when I talked about this with my tour guide, he told me that it was a personal problem," she said.

The next day, the company apologised for the incident and offered to accompany her to the police station.

But she was rushing to catch her flight home, and penned down details of the incident in an email for Malaysian police to follow up on the case.

Mixed signals?

However, some netizens didn't buy into the tourist story, accusing her of giving the man mixed signals.

Netizens flooded the comment section of the Facebook post with a separate screenshot, which appeared to have been leaked from the instructor's phone.

The instructor had confronted her and asked if she had lodged a complaint against her for the kiss, to which she declined, before adding that she "liked how it felt" at that point in time.

Another snippet from video also surfaced, where she was seen forming a hand heart with the man.

On Monday, Malaysian police arrested the 27-year-old suspect and are investigating a case under Section 354 of the Penal Code for using criminal force to outrage the modesty of a woman, The Star reported.

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wongdaoen@asiaone.com