**Speech by Mr K Shanmugam, Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Law, at PAVE’s Dating Violence Awareness Week Event at *SCAPE**

22 FEB 2019

22 Feb 2019 Posted in Speeches

Mr Michael Gray, President of PAVE,
Mr Alan John, Vice President of PAVE
Ladies and Gentlemen,

First, let me congratulate PAVE, for this truly magnificent journey that you’ve undertaken and walked.
Dr Sudha has a small team, 34 people, and in these twenty years, more than 20,000 people, mainly vulnerable women, have been helped.
At any given time, hundreds of victims are being helped, and you can imagine the amount of trauma they go through and how much it takes out of the volunteers in PAVE, so it’s truly meaningful important work.
PAVE invited me last year to talk about the work they are doing. I visited PAVE’s family violence specialist centre in August 2018 in Ang Mo Kio.
Dr Sudha and her team spoke with me about what their clients go through and the stories were distressing in themselves.
She also pointed out the difficulties and the gaps in the system, both in terms of the legal framework as well as in application, particularly for intimate partners.
When you’re in an intimate partner relationship, just like in a marriage, the victims are paralysed; they’re suffering great pain and hurt. They struggle even to get the assistance they need.
After listening, I told her we will do something.
We arranged for Dr Sudha and her team, and PAVE’s management to meet with some key stakeholders.
As a direct result of PAVE’s advocacy, the law is going to be changed. I will come back to this later, but let me first touch on the theme for this exhibition.
This is the 10^th anniversary of the Dating Violence Awareness Week and it’s the first ever nation-wide campaign that is targeted specifically at young people, to raise awareness in them of intimate partner violence.
We need to educate young people to have a healthy relationship; what a healthy relationship looks like.
For those who may be subject to abuse, to have the strength to understand what is right and what is wrong, and to be able to walk away when they see that something is wrong.

Dating violence
IPV is a real problem.
A 2013 World Health Organisation study on IPV collected data on more than 24,000 women in 10 countries, both married and unmarried.
It showed that 6 in 10 women reported physical violence at the hands of their partner. One in two were subjected to severe physical violence by a partner.
In Australia, one in six women and one in 16 men have been victims of physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner, since the age of 15, which is why we need to target the young.
Violence in an IPV situation has a very serious impact on health. Particularly women - for women aged 25-44, violence in an intimate relationship is much more serious than any other disease or risk factor.
In the US, on average, nearly 20 people suffer physical abuse by an intimate partner every single minute, every day. It equates to more than 10 million women and men in one year.
One in four women and one in seven men have been victims of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in the US. When we say violence – beating, burning, strangling.
Young women, in particular, are very vulnerable, between the ages 18 and 24. They are the most commonly abused by an intimate partner.
The studies show, beyond I think any reasonable doubt, that the abuse often starts early in the relationship when the couple first start dating, and then carries on into marriage.
PAVE commissioned a study in Singapore in 2012.
One in three unmarried persons between 15 and 34 have been in an abusive relationship. Of these, two-thirds had their first abusive relationship in their teens.
On average, 20% of those who are abused by their spouses or are themselves abusers, the abuse started when they were first dating.
The fact that many victims are abused when they are very young and become conditioned to that abuse, that they have known nothing else, impacts their ability to seek help.
There was an example of this in the news two days ago, in Singapore.
It was branded by the Prosecution as the “most aggravated case of human trafficking in Singapore”.
A 27-year-old man began assaulting his wife when they first started dating. After marriage, the abuse continued through pregnancies.
After the second child was born, he forced her to prostitute herself to pay for the baby.
For us, we say, how come she doesn’t walk away? These are not necessarily uneducated women. Highly educated women - doctors, lawyers, others - they also continue to subject themselves to this. They do not walk away.
So you cannot blame them. You have to look for a deeper cause and then try and help them.
So the man imposed a daily quota of customers; forced her to service 138 men in three months. He also sexually abused, his own six-year old daughter, and his 13-year old niece.
His wife did not leave; she did not tell anyone. He threatened to kill her if she did. Abuse only stopped when his mother reported him.
It is extremely important, that we focus on the young. This exhibition about healthy relationships could not have come any earlier.
We need to educate young people on violence - why it is wrong and why you should walk away; why you should not accept violence or for that matter, any kind of abusive behaviour. It is a very good initiative and I commend it.
Many victims of IPV are conditioned to believe that they cannot walk away.
The abusers usually cut them off - from family and friends, and keep them virtually as prisoners, mentally and physically.

Real Life Examples
In BBC earlier this week, a man spoke about how his wrists were cut down to the vein with a bread knife.
“I’ll never forget the moment that X first poured scalding water over me. We had been together for 3 years…I can still see that first tiny drop of water falling onto my skin. It all happened in slow motion. Afterwards, my skin was curdling. The pain was like nothing I’d ever experienced. I begged…to get into a bath filled with cold water… X allowed me to get in… You cannot imagine how incredible it feels to sink your body into freezing water. It is the nicest feeling in the world. Then X told me I had to get out- or X would do it all over again.”
I mean you would ask: Why would a man who is physically stronger allow himself to be subjected to this? You can imagine the kind of mental hold that one partner can have, women or men.
“I remember lying in the bath with no clothes on. It looked like I was in an oven, cooking. My skin was peeling off. It was absolutely horrible.”
We have equally horrible stories in Singapore.
Previously, I spoke about the case of “Sally”. I heard it first from PAVE; it really made a deep impact on me.
Others have gone through this. In the case of Ms R – she met her boyfriend when she was 16. He had a long history of being abusive. He had abused his ex-wife, who ran away; children left in foster care.
Two months into the courtship, the abuse began. He punched her repeatedly, slammed her head against the wall, pulled her hair, swung her against the wall.
When she tried to break up, he threatened suicide, took a knife to cut himself.
At 18, she became pregnant; he intensified his abuse. He strangled her, kicked her, punched, threatened to stab her, slammed her head against a wall, even as she was pregnant.
She married him thinking that the baby would change his behaviour, a few days before the baby was born. The abuse did not stop. He beat her with the baby in her arms and the baby started showing signs of trauma.
She ran to PAVE. With PAVE’s help, she reconciled with her family, was given child care and a rental flat with HDB’s assistance.
She has now graduated from ITE from a nursing course and is applying for a diploma in nursing.
She is only 22 years old, so for 6 years, you can imagine what she has gone through. It is really heart-breaking when you hear of these stories, but also heart-warming that they can turn a corner with the help of the rest of society.

Amendments to POHA
No one should undergo such violence. People should be able to stop it the moment it starts. And certainly not such violence at the hands of the person they trust.
There are laws in place, which can help those being abused, by IPV. There is the Women’s Charter for married IPV victims. If a criminal act has taken place, there is the Penal Code.
PAVE highlighted to me that unmarried IPV victims faced issues in trying to actually access the legal system.
For example, they cannot apply for a Personal Protection Order under the Women’s Charter.
Victims who suffer dating violence have 2 options.
One - They can file a Magistrate’s Complaint, but that process takes time to get protection after the summons is served. Not many people would dare to go and get a summons without getting protection upfront.
Two - to apply for a PO under POHA. But the actual process of trying to get a PO again took some time. It was not as easy as getting one under the Women’s Charter.
Some of you, in the audience here, are yourselves victims of IPV, or you have gone through a painful experience of seeing your family members victimised, traumatised. I think from society’s perspective, every case is one case too many, and we have to stop this. At least we have to do everything we can to put in place a framework that will stop this.
I will share with you what we have tried to do, after PAVE spoke with me.
We are going to change the law to make it easier for victims. We will amend the Penal Code and POHA. All of this will be done within the next few months.
Under the POHA amendments, first we will set up a Protection from Harassment Court. This Court will hear all POHA matters: civil and criminal. Victims do not have to shuffle between civil and criminal courts.
Second, we will simplify the forms and processes for making such applications.
Third, we will also try and make sure the relief is given much faster. There are cases where even one additional night in the home is paved with a lot of risk.
We have discussed with the Courts. The Courts have told us that for an expedited protection order (EPO) application, they will aim to hear these within 48-72 hours of application.
Where there is risk of violence or actual violence, they will try to hear the EPO application within 24 hours.
For the hearing for the final order, the Courts will generally try to hear within 4 weeks from the time the application is filed. But in those 4 weeks, the EPO will be in place, so the person will be injuncted from doing anything to the victim.
We are also going to reduce the burden of proof for victims applying for a PO/ EPO.
Finally, we’ll also toughen the law. Once the court gives the protection order, if anyone breaches that order, we will make it arrestable. In the past it wasn’t so.
After the first breach, if there is a second breach, we will increase the penalties by doubling them.
Family members, such as the children and parents of victims, are often at risk of abuse from the abuser. The law will be changed, to allow the protection orders to cover - and also expedited protection orders - to cover these other persons related to the victim, so that they can be protected.

Penal Code Amendments
If the victim is the subject of criminal violence, the abuser can be charged under the Penal Code.
We are going to amend the Penal Code to stiffen the penalties so that if the victim is in an intimate relationship, whatever the penalty is for touching or hitting somebody else, the penalties will be doubled.

Conclusion
This is what we can do with the legal framework. But you know the journey is long; we are not at the end of the journey. The law will be in place if Parliament agrees, within the next three months or so. Once that is in place, then the law has to be applied.
Between having the law and applying the law, there is always a process, and this is a process for which my ministry will need feedback. We need to work in partnership with all sectors of community, including key civil society organisations like PAVE.
We need to educate the public that IPV is real. That’s why this exhibition is extremely important. It could happen to the most well-educated, the young, the old. It could happen to anyone.
I would like to end by commending PAVE. The amendments we spoke about today, all these changes that you see, which are going to be put in place - all entirely due to the starting conversation that we had with PAVE.
This is an excellent example of how a dedicated civil society organisation that is on the ground, that has worked the ground, and can back up what it says with concrete examples, can make a decisive change at the highest levels, including changing the law and the process.
I hope that your actions will serve an inspiration to other civil society organisations. That everyone - every individual, every organisation - can make a difference in this society.
PAVE is an inspiration to many other civil society organisations, and long may you continue with your work.
Thank you very much.

Last updated on 22 Feb 2019