By AL
After following the political drama surrounding a wee 16-year-old, the latest episode has now riled me to pen my opinions down on his molest allegations to Vincent Law. As an advocate of human rights and free speech in Singapore, I am appalled at how he treats the issue of molestation so flippantly.
Child molestation, like rape, is one of the most under-reported crimes. Only 1-10% are ever disclosed according to the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. These victims would usually go through a process of shame, guilt, and self-loathing before, hopefully, coming to terms with what has happened to them. Some people aren’t lucky and they carry that emotional baggage with them for life. For Amos to boldly make that claim initially had raised my suspicions on its validity, and lo and behold, he revealed that it was a troll bait for the media.
But fine, let’s play by the definition of emotional abuse instead of physical assault according to Amos’s blogpost. If all of those allegations from his fake apology blogpost were true, then shame on you, Vincent Law. Shame on you for having an ulterior motive to push your Christian agenda on an atheist. Shame on you for using threats rather than sensibility on someone whose “faith” is based on reasoning than believing in a deity. If I had to sit through talks on Christianity in every meeting every day, I would have zoned out as well because of my general apathy towards religion as well. All of those statements are made while assuming that the events that transpired were true.
However, would someone who was emotionally abused by a preaching youth counsellor be so quick to make a report on being molested? I doubt so. The victim’s behavioural change would be similar to that of a victim of pedophilia. Sometimes, they can also display signs of aggression and extreme outbursts. Note: outburst. If it was an outburst, Amos’s blogpost would have been worded a little differently, perhaps more violently. Amos had made a more calculating move rather than an impulsive one. This deviation from the symptoms usually displayed by emotionally abused children should arouse suspicion, and perhaps, outrage, from his impudent diction. This blatant misuse of his free speech ideology has now dethroned him as the 2015 icon for free speech in Singapore.
Emotional abuse and child molestation victims rarely ever have their voices spotlighted because of their fear of being judged, yet Amos trespasses that line by quickly making a molest allegation with an intention to defame Vincent. This move is not only a low blow, but also has implications with how society would perceive REAL stories of abuse victims — that they’re likely to dismiss them because the victims are only trying to get attention and trying to tarnish the image of the abuser. His privileged position of being a Singaporean Chinese, “perfectly straight”, and presumably, cisgendered individual, would only continue to erase the voices of marginalised victims either by race, gender, and disability.
One of his ex-fans on his blogpost dismissed him as the boy who cried wolf one too many times. Imagine the fear that, for example, a Malay genderqueer victim of sexual assault may carry over knowing that phrase “no one comes running for boys who cry wolf” when trying to lodge that police report.
