BREAKING /
"IT WAS MENTAL TORTURE" RUTHE KEE |
21.9.2011
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Police officer taking a statement from Kee. Credit: Dexter Sim
I didn’t want to remember but I couldn’t get the image of a man masturbating out of my head. At the same time, I was overwhelmed by a nagging sense of paranoia – I kept thinking someone was following me.
On Sept. 8, 2011 at about 11:40p.m., a man exposed his genitals and masturbated to my friend, Wong Su Suan, and I at a road junction between Clementi road and the West Coast highway.
We were returning from a hall activity at West Coast Park and the two of us lagged behind the main group of about 50 Kent Ridge hall residents by about 10 metres.
Wong, a second-year real estate major at the National University of Singapore, said she noticed the man even before we reached the road junction. The 19-year-old said the man was holding a cloth and flapping it around in a drying motion. “I thought he was just a homeless guy,” she said. Wong identified the man as a Chinese man at least in his 30s, of average height and slightly hefty build.
“At a point I realised he wasn’t wearing pants or Bermudas,” Wong said, “but I didn’t think he would be a flasher.”
Wong said once she realised that the man could be completely naked, she dared not look at the man again. When we reached the junction, the rest of the pack had already crossed the road and only the two of us were left at the junction.
While Wong had noticed the man earlier, it was only at this point that I heard someone whispering to us from behind me.
It was dark, and I remembered turning around to see a male figure whose entire body was of one colour. Before my mind could register him as being naked, my attention was drawn to the black tuft of hair that stood out against the man’s pale skin. Then, I noticed that something was moving against that tuft of black – he was masturbating. It took about a second for my consciousness to react from a blank state to shock and then panic. Instinctively, I screamed and ran across the road, pulling Wong along.
“I didn’t dare to turn back once, not even once,” Wong said.
The moment we reached the group, I tried to borrow Wong’s phone to make a police report but she was still in a state of shock. The next thing I know, I was grasping at a friend in desperation.
While waiting for the police to arrive, three male friends brought me back to the scene of crime to search for the man while Wong stayed with the rest of the group.
It was dreadful. I didn’t want to go back. I didn’t want to go near the crime scene anymore. It did not help that I was alone as they ran ahead of me. Suddenly, the night seemed darker, more sinister and I feel more vulnerable than ever.
I used to think that running into a flasher was not a big deal, and perhaps even amusing. Looking from hindsight, it is easy to think of the incident as a case of public indecency isolated from the continuum of time. But if you were to remove yourself from the privilege of hindsight and place yourself right at the instant when I faced the man, it would be a different story. Right then, I wasn’t able to look into the future and know that the man would stop at masturbating. At that instant, this man was potentially dangerous, and I was his victim. I had no means of knowing what he was about to do to me.
Then, the jokes my friends cracked about the man weren’t funny anymore. It no longer seemed like trivial matter to me, and to make a joke out of it was too dumb down the severity of the matter. It is not funny when one realises the potentiality of the situation to have aggravated into something far worse than public indecency.
In this case, I was the victim, and it’s unnerving to even consider any scenario worse than this. Imagine if I had been alone.
After the police arrived, more searches were carried out. But the man was nowhere to be found. While the man had left my line of vision, the nightmare had not ended. In my mind’s eye, I could not remove the imagery of the man masturbating. It was mental torture deeply etched in my head and remained this way for a few days.
Certainly this wasn’t the way I had envisioned my night to end.
Even till today, I sometimes still feel a heightened tension when I am alone in the dark. I can only describe it as a mixture of paranoia of someone lurking in the shadows behind and a sense of insecurity.
But perhaps what’s most eerie about this encounter is how it strikes an uncanny coincidence with an experience last semester.
Towards the end of last semester, a male NUS student was arrested for the same sexual offense. This student happened to be my friend. I was furious at the news coverage by a local newspaper, concerned by how it had ruined his future by identifying him with his photo on a front page. I truly believed that, as a writer, this was a question of ethics.
In a strange twist of events, I now find myself a victim of the same crime.
Unfortunately or fortunately, I can no longer see this as merely a case of newspaper ethics. I had two choices: remain silent about this issue or report it as a student journalist. I chose to write, because I realised this is not a matter of ethical issues where undergraduates discuss at the table. It is a matter of the safety of womenfolk at jeopardy. Rather than treating it as flashing – or worse, public indecency – as a subject of jokes, we need to realise that those capable of these acts are capable of doing worse.
When contacted on the psychological conditions of men who commit such obscene acts, NUS Counselling and Psychological Services declined to comment.
The threat these individuals pose to the safety of women is a real and pressing issue. Just slightly more than 24 hours after I witnessed the lewd act, another Kent Ridge hall resident was caught in a similar situation.
This time round, it was Carolyn Lai Jia En, a third-year political science major. The 21-year-old said she was taking a walk with two other female friends to celebrate mid-autumn festival when they saw a man masturbating in their direction. At about 2 a.m. on Sept. 10,2011 they were approached by the man in the same vicinity where Wong and I had previously witnessed the obscene act.
On Sept. 8, 2011 at about 11:40p.m., a man exposed his genitals and masturbated to my friend, Wong Su Suan, and I at a road junction between Clementi road and the West Coast highway.
We were returning from a hall activity at West Coast Park and the two of us lagged behind the main group of about 50 Kent Ridge hall residents by about 10 metres.
Wong, a second-year real estate major at the National University of Singapore, said she noticed the man even before we reached the road junction. The 19-year-old said the man was holding a cloth and flapping it around in a drying motion. “I thought he was just a homeless guy,” she said. Wong identified the man as a Chinese man at least in his 30s, of average height and slightly hefty build.
“At a point I realised he wasn’t wearing pants or Bermudas,” Wong said, “but I didn’t think he would be a flasher.”
Wong said once she realised that the man could be completely naked, she dared not look at the man again. When we reached the junction, the rest of the pack had already crossed the road and only the two of us were left at the junction.
While Wong had noticed the man earlier, it was only at this point that I heard someone whispering to us from behind me.
It was dark, and I remembered turning around to see a male figure whose entire body was of one colour. Before my mind could register him as being naked, my attention was drawn to the black tuft of hair that stood out against the man’s pale skin. Then, I noticed that something was moving against that tuft of black – he was masturbating. It took about a second for my consciousness to react from a blank state to shock and then panic. Instinctively, I screamed and ran across the road, pulling Wong along.
“I didn’t dare to turn back once, not even once,” Wong said.
The moment we reached the group, I tried to borrow Wong’s phone to make a police report but she was still in a state of shock. The next thing I know, I was grasping at a friend in desperation.
While waiting for the police to arrive, three male friends brought me back to the scene of crime to search for the man while Wong stayed with the rest of the group.
It was dreadful. I didn’t want to go back. I didn’t want to go near the crime scene anymore. It did not help that I was alone as they ran ahead of me. Suddenly, the night seemed darker, more sinister and I feel more vulnerable than ever.
I used to think that running into a flasher was not a big deal, and perhaps even amusing. Looking from hindsight, it is easy to think of the incident as a case of public indecency isolated from the continuum of time. But if you were to remove yourself from the privilege of hindsight and place yourself right at the instant when I faced the man, it would be a different story. Right then, I wasn’t able to look into the future and know that the man would stop at masturbating. At that instant, this man was potentially dangerous, and I was his victim. I had no means of knowing what he was about to do to me.
Then, the jokes my friends cracked about the man weren’t funny anymore. It no longer seemed like trivial matter to me, and to make a joke out of it was too dumb down the severity of the matter. It is not funny when one realises the potentiality of the situation to have aggravated into something far worse than public indecency.
In this case, I was the victim, and it’s unnerving to even consider any scenario worse than this. Imagine if I had been alone.
After the police arrived, more searches were carried out. But the man was nowhere to be found. While the man had left my line of vision, the nightmare had not ended. In my mind’s eye, I could not remove the imagery of the man masturbating. It was mental torture deeply etched in my head and remained this way for a few days.
Certainly this wasn’t the way I had envisioned my night to end.
Even till today, I sometimes still feel a heightened tension when I am alone in the dark. I can only describe it as a mixture of paranoia of someone lurking in the shadows behind and a sense of insecurity.
But perhaps what’s most eerie about this encounter is how it strikes an uncanny coincidence with an experience last semester.
Towards the end of last semester, a male NUS student was arrested for the same sexual offense. This student happened to be my friend. I was furious at the news coverage by a local newspaper, concerned by how it had ruined his future by identifying him with his photo on a front page. I truly believed that, as a writer, this was a question of ethics.
In a strange twist of events, I now find myself a victim of the same crime.
Unfortunately or fortunately, I can no longer see this as merely a case of newspaper ethics. I had two choices: remain silent about this issue or report it as a student journalist. I chose to write, because I realised this is not a matter of ethical issues where undergraduates discuss at the table. It is a matter of the safety of womenfolk at jeopardy. Rather than treating it as flashing – or worse, public indecency – as a subject of jokes, we need to realise that those capable of these acts are capable of doing worse.
When contacted on the psychological conditions of men who commit such obscene acts, NUS Counselling and Psychological Services declined to comment.
The threat these individuals pose to the safety of women is a real and pressing issue. Just slightly more than 24 hours after I witnessed the lewd act, another Kent Ridge hall resident was caught in a similar situation.
This time round, it was Carolyn Lai Jia En, a third-year political science major. The 21-year-old said she was taking a walk with two other female friends to celebrate mid-autumn festival when they saw a man masturbating in their direction. At about 2 a.m. on Sept. 10,2011 they were approached by the man in the same vicinity where Wong and I had previously witnessed the obscene act.
The location where all four women reported encountering the man. Credit: Google Maps
Lai said she knew what happened to Wong and I. “It was quite incredulous that we were joking about it and it ended up happening to us,” she said.
The trio were joking about meeting a flasher as they walked towards West Coast Park, Lai said. They saw a man near a tree, who then proceeded to remove his pants and faced them as he masturbated. Lai said they laughed at the man while he proceeded with the lewd act.
It was too dark to identify the man’s facial features, Lai said, but he was a Chinese male of average height and of slightly hefty build.
“I’ve heard of a lot of people getting flashed at in that area,” Lai said.
There have been numerous incidents of female students encountering acts of public indecency in the vicinity of NUS or even within NUS this year. Not all students report their encounters to the police. Lai did not call the police.
Wong Sher Lynn, 21, also a Kent Ridge hall resident, encountered a flasher in June this year.
The third year chemistry major said she was jogging along West Coast highway to Kent Ridge hall with a friend when they saw a man masturbating in their direction. They encountered the man, identified as a Chinese male of average height and of slightly hefty build, at the same junction between Clementi road and the West Coast highway.
“What was the most disturbing wasn’t him flashing at us,” she said, “but the way he looked at us.”
“We were so scared we slept together that night,” she added. She and her friend made a police report.
“Flashing is a problem, but the [real] problem is that nothing is being done about it which makes me worry about ... what’s the next level. And no one has stopped the flashing yet,” Lai said.
Flashing may appear trivial compared to cases of rape or murder as it is without physical contact, but the psychological distress it places on a woman is just as real.
“I just felt very disgusted,” Wong said. “How can someone do something like that to another person?”
The trio were joking about meeting a flasher as they walked towards West Coast Park, Lai said. They saw a man near a tree, who then proceeded to remove his pants and faced them as he masturbated. Lai said they laughed at the man while he proceeded with the lewd act.
It was too dark to identify the man’s facial features, Lai said, but he was a Chinese male of average height and of slightly hefty build.
“I’ve heard of a lot of people getting flashed at in that area,” Lai said.
There have been numerous incidents of female students encountering acts of public indecency in the vicinity of NUS or even within NUS this year. Not all students report their encounters to the police. Lai did not call the police.
Wong Sher Lynn, 21, also a Kent Ridge hall resident, encountered a flasher in June this year.
The third year chemistry major said she was jogging along West Coast highway to Kent Ridge hall with a friend when they saw a man masturbating in their direction. They encountered the man, identified as a Chinese male of average height and of slightly hefty build, at the same junction between Clementi road and the West Coast highway.
“What was the most disturbing wasn’t him flashing at us,” she said, “but the way he looked at us.”
“We were so scared we slept together that night,” she added. She and her friend made a police report.
“Flashing is a problem, but the [real] problem is that nothing is being done about it which makes me worry about ... what’s the next level. And no one has stopped the flashing yet,” Lai said.
Flashing may appear trivial compared to cases of rape or murder as it is without physical contact, but the psychological distress it places on a woman is just as real.
“I just felt very disgusted,” Wong said. “How can someone do something like that to another person?”