When John’s* parents divorced four years ago, his father turned violent.
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“He became an alcoholic, there was a lot of verbal and emotional abuse, and he would lock me out of the house,” said John, now in his 20s, who still lives with his father. “Last April, he broke into my room and beat me with a screwdriver. He tried to hurt me, and he did.”
John reported the case to the police, who asked if he had another place to stay the night. Earlier this year, he applied for a personal protection order against his father, and the abuse has since waned.
John recalled that at the height of the violence, he had trouble understanding “why I was the one who was supposed to help myself escape the situation”.
Singapore’s child-protection system has been thrust into the spotlight following the horrific case of four-year-old Megan Khung, who was abused and beaten to death by her mother, Foo Li Ping, and the woman’s then boyfriend, Wong Shi Xiang.
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Megan had suffered a year of abuse – including being forced to sleep in a planter box and getting hit by a water hosepipe – before she died in February 2020 after Wong dealt a fatal punch to her stomach. Wong and Foo burned Megan’s body in a metal barrel, and her death was only discovered five months later, following police reports lodged by her biological father and maternal grandmother.
In April, Wong was sentenced to 30 years’ jail and 17 strokes of the cane, while Foo was sentenced to 19 years in jail.