Gay is NOT = Paedophile
My dad is, in general, someone who believes in equality for all races, religions and sexual orientations.
Yet the other day, I overheard him telling my brother to be careful cos there are all kinds of people these days ……. These gay men in all the catholic churches , all the gay priests.
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It seems like these days, secularists blame the Catholic Church, religious faithful blame gay people (And yes, I realise i’ve just committed the same crime of generalisation and hence have turned secularists, faithful and gay people against me with a single sentence! so i should qualify and say that it’s the media that seems to portray that. Hmmm have I made an enemy out of the media people too???shucks.)
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At the end of the day, this is a matter of respecting people’s freedom to believe in whatever they choose, and to love whoever they want; it is about protecting people from being abused, about bringing justice to those who have violated others while not unjustly categorising the innocent together with the guilty. All at once.
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The guilt of the abusers do not lie with the Catholic Church & followers, neither does it lie with gay people.
The guilt lies with
- the individual people who abused the trust of the Church, the followers, and the children
- the individual people who turned a blind eye to justice and covered up the crimes
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Just as there are heterosexual abusers and heterosexual good people, there are also homosexual abusers and homosexual good people. Within any institution or setting or organisation, we need to ask if the loopholes allow easy exploitation by either heterosexual or homosexual abusers (ie. individual people seeking opportunities to abuse victims)
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We also need to recognise the RESPONSIBILITY that ALSO lies with
- the government and law enforcement officers, whose job is to protect the citizens of all race, religion, age, etc, rather than to protect the image and sanctity of institutions
- the citizens, whose responsibility it is to call governments and institutions to question and checks
- the families, whose responsibility it is to believe in and protect their children, rather than seemingly incorruptible institutions of any kind.
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This means that everyone of us is responsible for ensuring such abuses do not happen in our local institutions.
Responsibility belongs to all.
But guilt, belongs only to the guilty.
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In many of these countries eg. Ireland, the government and people’s preference to protect the image of the Church had resulted in the delays and obstruction of justice for decades. The disbelieve on the part of parents made victims of their own children over and over again.
Should ambulance paramedics save drink-driver accident victims?
A friend of mine recently became an ambulance paramedic. He’s a devout Muslim and very involved in interfaith work here. I asked him if his experiences as a paramedic influenced his religious thinking and views of life in general. What he shared was very beautiful.
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Drink-drivers who meet with accidents gave him the most moral-emotional struggles. To him, drink-driving is one of the most stupid and irresponsible things a person can do. When an accident happens, the drink-driver almost always is the cause of it, and is responsible for his own sorry plight.
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Yet, as an ambulance paramedic, he does his very best to help and treat and save the drink-driver accident “victim”.
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These experiences, he says, has changed his mindset and taught him that what a person does and deserves, can and often should be separated from how we treat him. Just because the person did something really wrong, and landed himself in huge trouble, doesn’t mean that we should let him suffer and die.
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It is the plight of the accident victim that determines how the ambulance paramedic should behave, not what the ambulance paramedic thinks of the victim’s actions and responsibilities
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I thought that was so beautiful.
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Society has little compassion for conditions like HIV. Why should we subsidise their treatments when they got infected through their promiscuity? Through irresponsible behavior? These are common responses.
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Or when a teenager becomes the victim of sexual abuse because she put herself at risk or was careless, how many people have been unsympathetic, saying that she deserved it?
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How would you feel if you were in an accident and the ambulance paramedic didn’t help you because he thought you put yourself at risk by jaywalking?
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How would you feel if you had a heart attack and the hospitals didn’t treat you or took away the 80% Class C subsidy, because you were a huge char kway teow or laksa fan?
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Why do we continue to subsidise people who smoke and people who don’ t exercise?
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Because who are we to judge? Who are we to pronounce the death sentence on someone? Like the ambulance paramedic, it is not our place to judge and to punish. We help because we can, because we ought to, because they need it. At least I think, that’s our role as human beings.
Sexual abuse doesn’t happen to females only.
I’m particularly concerned about rape cases that happen to boys/men.
Most of the rape of men cases that go reported are committed by strangers/”hostile” people.
However, we know that 90% of female rape cases are committed by trusted family/friends, and that these tend to be the unreported ones.
I suspect that an even greater proportion of male rape cases also get committed by trusted friends/family, and that societal pressures & biased laws mean that the under reporting of male rape cases & lack of support is worse.
http://news.asiaone.com/News/The%2BNew%2BPaper/Story/A1Story20090518-142150.html –Sex monster looks for ‘easy targets’ in library
In this article, the victim was a male child and it was reported because the mother was observant. Also, the perpertrator is a male stranger. I’m wondering (wondering, because no stats) what if it’s a 14 yr old boy and the perpertrator is a 29 yr old male good buddy? Would that be reported?
Of great concern too, the confession:
“HE WAS arrested for performing oral sex on a 6-year-old boy in a library toilet. After Chan Kok Weng, 29, was charged for the offence, he was sent for a psychiatric assessment. And that was when he made an explosive confession – he had been preying on young boys for about 15 years. Chan told Dr Stephen Phang, senior consultant psychiatrist at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), that he had been a sexual predator since he was in Secondary Two. He would seek out primary schoolboys at public places and perform oral sex on them.Chan revealed to Dr Phang: ‘(I) always target young boys, less than 10 years old or 11 years old because it’s the easiest target. Most of them are Chinese… it’s easier to communicate with them’. He also said that he usually targeted ‘primary school boys because it’s easier to get trust from them.’”
Cases over the last 15 years go unreported —- WHY???
These are the findings of the report, on how tens of thousands of boys were sexually abused for decades in Ireland (a conservative religious nation for a good part of the last century) , and how no one bothered:
Sexual Abuse
- Sexual abuse was endemic in boys’ institutions.
- Long-term offenders repeatedly abused children wherever they worked.
- When confronted by evidence of sexual abuse, religious authorities responded by transferring the offender to another location where, in many cases, he was free to abuse again.
- Congregational authorities did not listen to or believe people who complained of sexual abuse in the past, despite extensive evidence to the contrary.
- Older boys sexually abused younger boys and the system did not offer the abused boys protection.
- A culture of silence prevented sexual abuse by members of religious orders being brought to the department’s attention.
- The Department of Education dealt inadequately with sexual abuse complaints
(http://www.independent.ie/national-news/state-of-shame-1746476.html)
I really hope someone steps forward to address this and I would want to contribute where I can too.
“Similarly, the Women’s Charter in Singapore has been abused by NoToRapers. It is sad to see that men in Singapore are so helpless against the these feminists.”
I personally don’t think that life is about a male vs female battle (that’s kindergarten culture!!! )
I think that all these articles should be gender neutral — ie apply both ways, to males, females, in a marriage, gay marriage, long-term co-habition.
I completely agree, that men have it worse when it comes to abuse, because of the culture, and the policies/practices rooted in this culture.
(This short post is writen in response to a comment (in italics) from another website.)
Police handling of rape cases in Singapore : Skills Upgrading Needed.
http://www.todayonline.com/Print/Singapore/EDC091120-0000099/Victim-reveals-more-of-ordeal-to-female-officer
(reproduced at the end of this post too. I hope that she will be strong, know that none of this is her fault, and that many people care about her and will support her all the way)
(If you are, or know the victim of a sexual/domestic violence crime , and wish to speak anonymously to a female counsellor before deciding whether or not to report to the police, or to simply get help, the AWARE Helpline is open Monday to Friday from 3pm to 9.30pm. Call 1800 774 5935. Aware also has a BeFriender service for a female volunteer to accompany you to make reports, see doctors etc. Aware also has face-to-face private counselling with female professional counsellors. All services are free. Aware depends on the generous financial donations from the public who support our work. http://www.aware.org.sg/direct-services/helpline/ Lesbian/Gay/Bi – Affirmative )
She’s just victimised over and over;
first by the perpertrators,
then by the police
(insensitive on their part, why did the victim have to request to speak privately to a female officer when it was the job of the officers to help her feel safe? I would even say that by having the male officers interogate the victims, they are creating so much more distressed and should be disciplied for their behavior. This reveals systematic lack of appropriate training for for the force as a whole),
then the media
( as one FB comment goes: “There were 3 officers at the scene, one of whom was a female. The victim didn’t want to reveal the details to the female officer in the presence of the the male officers and requested to speak with the female officer alone. It is quite normal for rape victims to downplay the shame by referring to the incident as molest. This piece of non-news has no purpose – either the reporter doesn’t know the subject matter or it’s a report for the sake of reporting on this particular court case.” )
and then by lowlife like this (before you leave a comment for my post, I hope you think about whether you are one of these lowlife, and if you are, please go somewhere else)
http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/showthread.php?t=2572165&page=5
who make me truly hope that hell exists.
This may not be the most ideal recommendations on how rape cases should be handled, but it’s the best I could find during the 15 min I had to write this. (Appreciate if you fwd me links to better sites/guidelines if you know of them) I was just comparing the recommendations with the TODAY article (reproduced below). Maybe all these were done, just not fully reported. Or maybe the investigations were done exactly as reported, but the Singapore system of having male officers badger her is better. You decide.
First Responder Duties
As with any other violent crime, the first officer on scene must ensure the victim receives medical attention. Paramedics must bring the victim to a hospital for medical care and a physical examination to establish the crime of rape or sexual assault. Investigators will take the victim’s garments as evidence, so officers should bring a change of clothes for the victim to the hospital whenever possible. The time to plan for this is early in the interaction. Many victims will have an advocate or friend with them to call on their behalf. Give this person the assignment of getting a change of clothing for the victim. Maintaining the chain of evidence is crucial, and a police officer, preferably a female officer, should accompany the victim in the ambulance.In addition to following normal procedures in protecting primary and secondary crime scenes, one of the first responders (preferably a female officer) should conduct a preliminary interview with the victim in private to determine if she knows or can identify the person who raped her. The officer should obtain a physical description of the rapist and ask the victim to explain what happened. The investigator, a rape counselor, or another care provider will conduct a detailed follow-up interview in a setting most comfortable to the victim.
One thing we lack here in Singapore is Rape Crisis Center. I’m sure we have people with the appropriate expertise in Singapore to set up such a centre. I hope it gets set up. If anyone is interested, I’ll be willing to contribute in whatever way I can.
The UK Rape Crisis website has some great material & I’m just highlighting some here :
Reporting Rape: http://www.rapecrisis.org.uk/reportingrape.html
Giving Support: http://www.rapecrisis.org.uk/givingsupport.html
And I was SO SO SO impressed by this page ….. the sensitivity shown : http://www.rapecrisis.org.uk/hideyourtracks.html
(If you are, or know the victim of a sexual/domestic violence crime , and wish to speak anonymously to a female counsellor before deciding whether or not to report to the police, or to simply get help, the AWARE Helpline is open Monday to Friday from 3pm to 9.30pm. Call 1800 774 5935. Aware also has a BeFriender service for a female volunteer to accompany you to make reports, see doctors etc. Aware also has face-to-face private counselling with female professional counsellors. All services are free. Aware depends on the generous financial donations from the public who support our work. http://www.aware.org.sg/direct-services/helpline/ Lesbian/Gay/Bi – Affirmative)
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But the 17-year-old student later revealed privately to a female police officer details about the alleged rape that took place on Boxing Day last year.
The girl was still wearing the clothes from the previous night when officers first visited her, with smudged make-up on her face and her eyes puffy, Station Inspector Kim Lai Kuan of Jurong Police Division told the court.
According to her, the girl also appeared moody and in a daze.
Five young men aged between 17 to 20 are in the dock for allegedly raping and sexually assaulting the girl in a flat in Woodlands between 4am and 6am on Dec 26 last year.
Hours after the alleged attack, her boyfriend called the police, saying his girlfriend had been “molested” by a group of men in a van.
She had confided in him in an online chat but threatened to kill herself if he called the police, the court heard.
After SI Kim arrived at the flat with her two colleagues, SI Mohamed Azmi Chomil and Sergeant Mohammad Ridzuan Abdul Samad, they interviewed the girl in the living room.
The girl, now 18, repeated the story of being molested in a van.
When pressed by SI Mohamed Azmi for a description of the van, she was not “forthcoming” and requested to speak to SI Kim in private.
In her bedroom, she recounted to SI Kim the ordeal of how she had too much to drink in a Woodlands apartment and was raped by five men, one of whom was a friend of hers.
The case was later referred to the Serious Sexual Crimes branch of the Criminal Investigation Department.
The court was not told why the girl had first claimed to be molested in a van. She is likely to give evidence behind closed doors next week.
(If you are, or know the victim of a sexual/domestic violence crime , and wish to speak anonymously to a female counsellor before deciding whether or not to report to the police, or to simply get help, the AWARE Helpline is open Monday to Friday from 3pm to 9.30pm. Call 1800 774 5935. Aware also has a BeFriender service for a female volunteer to accompany you to make reports, see doctors etc. Aware also has face-to-face private counselling with female professional counsellors. All services are free. Aware depends on the generous financial donations from the public who support our work. http://www.aware.org.sg/direct-services/helpline/ Lesbian/Gay/Bi – Affirmative)
Child Sex Predation in Singapore & the need for CSE
I think our teacher molested us, over a period of 2 years, more than a decade ago when we were in Sec 3. We were a girls’ school, we didn’t know what to do about it then. Even now, I am not going to name any names, because I don’t want to have to defend myself in court. By naming names, they would have the right to sue me and summon me to court to substantiate my claims. I still don’t really know for sure if this was molest, I’ll just tell our story as it happened, and you be the judge.
My Story
We were an all girls’ school. The teacher taught us one of the Pure Science subjects in upper secondary for both years. He was a very engaging and interesting teacher, and so his students often did well because it was so easy to understand and enjoy his lessons.
As part of the practical (laboratory) lessons, we had to look down microscopes and perform dissections on flowers etc. The teacher would walk around the lab to check on us and make sure we were doing things the right way.
When he saw that a girl needed help, or if he needed to point out something about the way she did her experiment, he would stand behind her and stick his arm through the space between her body and her arm in order to guide her through the dissection/microscopy etc (seen the movie Ghost? Remember the pottery session? ). Back then, we sat on those high lab wooden stools, and our arms would be outstretched because they were busy doing the experiment on the table. As he stuck his hand through that very narrow gap, it would conveniently and unfailingly brush against her body.
After a few times of having these accidental brushes against my breasts, I learnt to do my experiments with my arms glued tightly to the sides of my body. Whenever I saw him coming, I’ll make sure I stood or moved aside, so that he had to stand beside me, and not behind me. But sometimes, I was so engrossed in the experiment, I forgot.
Another thing he liked to do was to share seats with students, especially the girls sitting along the middle aisle, and I was one of those girls. Those lab wooden stools were really small, the diameter of my 13-inch laptop. But because we had to lean forward to do the experiment, we often unconsciously sat on the edge of our stool — but the small size meant our butts took up half the stool. The teacher would be walking around, and then he would decide to share the seat with one of the girls sitting that way. The small size of the stool meant lots of body contact. But because everyone was sitting and paying attention, we felt very uncomfortable being the only one standing up.
After a few times of sharing my seat. I learnt to sit on my entire stool seat completely, lean forward and do my experiments with my arms glued to the sides of my body.
Because the lab was so huge, and because he liked doing demonstrations of experiments, he would often ask the entire class of 40 to crowd round the teacher’s bench at the front. After the demo, he would walk through the crowd with his hands outstretched to “push” his way through the crowd.
After a few times of having his hands “push” against my breasts (I don’t know how he can aim so accurately, not just once, but a few times! ) I learnt to fold my arms across my chest and make a lot of room for him the moment he looked like he was finishing with the demo.
The difficulty of reporting him – we were scared and confused
It was these sort of small things. Was it molest?
We talked about it amongst ourselves, even until today, more than 10 years later. We realized that not all, but only a handful of girls experienced this, but often, these girls experienced it repeatedly.
Back then, we spent so much time thinking of what we should/could do. He was a teacher of many many years, very well reputed, and popular amongst many previous batches of students. He was a figure of authority in the education field, and today, he still remains so. We were his last batch of students before he retired. We didn’t know if anyone would believe us at all. We were afraid of what the consequence might be if we were not believed. What if he found out we were trying to do something? We were an elite girls’ school, and we all wanted to move on to elite JCs, we didn’t dare to risk our grades and chances.
We also didn’t know if what he did could be considered molest, even though all of us affected ones were clearly disturbed by his actions. We didn’t want to be seen as ruining his reputation with some unfounded fears. So we continued to discuss what we ought to do.
Then one day, we heard that some girls from another class were going to report him, but that he got wind of it, and he scolded them severely. That confused us further. By the time we graduated, we had not come to a decision about what to do.
Years later, we one day read in the newspapers that he was charged with molesting a girl he was giving private tuition to. He was convicted for one year, a jail term which he served. None of us were surprised. Yet, today, he remains an authoritative figure in the field.
Why am I telling my story?
Because I need to tell you that these things happen in our schools and go unreported. And that it isn’t so simple and straight forward. The Instructors’ guide lists no such thing, but I always addressed sexual abuse in my classes. I wonder if any other educator does so, because I don’t have that chance to now.
Because some systems are so conducive for sexual abuse. Today I read about how thousands of Irish children were sexually abused. When the numbers go to thousands, you start examining the system rather than the criminal alone.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/state-of-shame-1746476.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8060442.stm
Because sex predators in Singapore can get away with it. Just 3 days ago I read this about Singapore
http://news.asiaone.com/News/The%2BNew%2BPaper/Story/A1Story20090518-142150.html
“HE WAS arrested for performing oral sex on a 6-year-old boy in a library toilet. After Chan Kok Weng, 29, was charged for the offence, he was sent for a psychiatric assessment. And that was when he made an explosive confession – he had been preying on young boys for about 15 years. Chan told Dr Stephen Phang, senior consultant psychiatrist at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), that he had been a sexual predator since he was in Secondary Two. He would seek out primary schoolboys at public places and perform oral sex on them.Chan revealed to Dr Phang: ‘(I) always target young boys, less than 10 years old or 11 years old because it’s the easiest target. Most of them are Chinese… it’s easier to communicate with them’. He also said that he usually targeted ‘primary school boys because it’s easier to get trust from them.’”
While I don’t think it is for us to judge Chan because we don’t have full info, and he may be suffering from psychological issues, what I’ll have issues with is our society and support system here that allows criminal behaviour to go undetected for 15 years.
Because I can no longer talk to teen girls directly. Today I read this “For these reasons stated, we (MOE) will not be able to use AWARE until they have gained the public’s trust for their sexuality programmes.”
http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/speeches/2009/05/21/remarks-by-dr-ng-eng-hen-on-se.php
And I know how much that CSE class would have benefited me 10 years ago, if I had access to an external third-party who made it comfortable for me to tell my story, and whom I knew would have found a way to help us.
Because AWARE’s platform might not be available for now, but because I believe there are so many important messages that needs to get out to the teens, I have decided I will use my blog as the platform instead.
I will tell you more in my subsequent posts
I have heard so many stories in all these classes. Stories I believe all parents and society should know about. I don’t have the time to write everything tonight, but I do ask that you come back to read, because I will tell you what reality is like in my subsequent blog posts, what advice I give, and you can decide for yourselves what you want to do.
I ask that you don’t Shut Up and Sit Down, but please stand up for what you believe in, and spread the message.
I invite you to give your opinion
I’ll also like your opinion on my story — What we could have done? What can I do now? How can we prevent these things from happening? What should schools do? Teachers do? Parents do? Students do?
And if by fate and chance, you happen to be part of my story too, or have a story to tell, I would be honoured if you shared it with us in the comments, anonymously if you need to be, or privately : mathialee@yahoo.com .
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