When debating a motion in parliament on empowering women on Tuesday (3 Aug), Minister of State for Home Affairs Desmond Tan said that the Worker’s Party (WP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Sengkang GRC Raeesah Khan’s allegations of police mishandling a sexual assault case are serious and must be investigated.
Ms Khan had shared her experience of accompanying a rape survivor to make a police report, saying that the 25-year-old had exited the police station in tears.
“The police officer had allegedly made comments about her dressing, and the fact that she was drinking,” she explained, before stressing the need to train more officers on how to better handle such cases as well as the need to deploy counsellors at police stations.
Highlighting the importance of such training in the effort to empower women, Ms Khan asserted that this will help build the confidence and capacity of law enforcement officers to be delicate in handling difficult cases while encouraging more victims of sexual assault to come forward.
Mr Tan, however, locked in on Ms Khan’s anecdote and asked that she provide more details on the case so that the authorities could look into it.
“We take any form of questions raised about how the police have handled or mishandled this case very seriously, and it should be investigated,” the Minister added.
Ms Khan responded that she didn’t want to bring up the issue again as she did not wish to retraumatise the person.
Stressing that this was not an isolated incident, she expressed her hope that anecdotes like this would spark a conversation on how sexual assault survivors are treated when they make a report to the police and other institutions.
Ms Khan went on to clarify that her intention was not to cast aspersions on the police.
“The police is part of the solution, not the problem,” she remarked.
Following that, Leader of the House Indranee Rajah took to the podium to remind all MPs to be responsible when exercising their parliamentary privileges.
“I just wanted to remind members of the House that when assertions and allegations are made, members must be prepared to substantiate them,” said Ms Indranee.
First step to taking this issue seriously is to recognise that it is not an isolated incident
Mr Tan’s response to Ms Khan’s speech, however, has been ill-received by many.
Journalist and activist Kristen Han took to Facebook on Tuesday saying that she has heard similar accounts to the one shared by Ms Khan in parliament.
Ms Han pointed out that the first step to taking the issue seriously is to recognise that the situation described by the Ms Khan is not an isolated incident.
She noted that Mr Tan’s request for details to investigate this specific case is a “common response” to anecdotes that illustrate a systemic problem.
“It shifts the focus on to the specifics of that one case, but the point is that there is a much bigger structural issue,” Ms Han asserted.
Netizen recounts her experience dealing with the authorities on her sexual assault case last year
Similarly, a netizen on Twitter called out Mr Tan’s remarks as well. In a thread, Twitter user @BABPLEH recounted her own experience dealing with the police and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) regarding her own sexual assault case in 2020.
“So I decided to email MHA and Shanmugam after I was massively upset with the way my statement was recorded and how my IO [investigating officer] did not want to collect evidence I had on hand but then changed his mind at a later date,” she wrote.
https://twitter.com/BABPLEH/status/1422733786702258181
Beyond that, she said that the IO had “minimised” her experience and even spelt the perpetrator’s name wrongly in the report. She was also not updated on the case despite being told that she would be contacted again after her first interview.
Sharing a screenshot of an email she sent last year, she noted that she only received a text message from the IO after she had posted about her experience online and it went viral.
She also alleged in the tweet: “The way my statement was recorded was so sub-standard I went home to type out my statement MYSELF, the way I wanted it and resubmitted it online.”
In the tread, she provided a couple of screenshots of the text messages she exchanged with the IO, with the caption: “The fact that I had to bend over backwards to be heard while still trying to grapple with my assault in a space I thought was safe?”
https://twitter.com/BABPLEH/status/1422733827210842117
She went on to say that the MHA eventually followed up with her and agreed to change her IO, but it didn’t end there as she had tried to highlight the unsatisfactory ways the police had handled her case but to no avail.
https://twitter.com/BABPLEH/status/1422733860396171264
She ended the thread by pointing out that she hates revisiting this case, which has yet to be closed.
“In an ideal world people who have had to deal with sexual assault shouldn’t have to also deal with internet trolls and incompetency from an organisation that claims to protect us,” she wrote.
“And yet here we are. Some minister in Parliament unable to even acknowledge the fact that police mishandling is a thing that YOUR CITIZENS HAVE GONE THROUGH.”
She also chastised Ms Indranee’s remark about substantiating such cases, saying: “Ok substantiate already then what? What did yall do except deflect.”
https://twitter.com/BABPLEH/status/1422733902704091142
She went on to say that gender equality advocacy group AWARE has also brought up this issue before.
In fact, in an open letter published on 15 January 2021, AWARE wrote: “Other survivors may dread being traumatised again when dealing with a police officer or a judge who is not sensitive.”
Subsequently, she shared a screenshot of a message she received from a fellow sexual assault survivor who encountered a similar experience with the authorities.
In that case, the person said that the IO “never ended up taking the clothes [they were] wearing when it happened”.
The person also noted that they had sent an email to Minister of Law and Home Affairs K Shanmugam and the police commissioner detailing how the police had “mishandled” their case and “botched the rape kit”, but never received a reply.
https://twitter.com/BABPLEH/status/1422849358781829122
