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About nine years after she was sexually assaulted by her ex-colleague from Mindef, a woman won a suit against her assailant for battery.
The woman had sought legal advice and pursued the civil case after the police did not take further action against the man whom she had dated.
She had filed a police report in 2021 over the 2016 incident.
According to a judgment dated May 23, the woman was awarded $45,000 in general damages, plus interest. This included $25,000 in compensation for pain and suffering and $20,000 for punitive damages.
She was also awarded $8,697.39 in special damages plus interest, an amount she claimed for medical and related expenses.
The Straits Times is not naming the claimant and defendant, to protect the identity of the woman.
According to the claimant, she and her former colleague began a romantic relationship in June 2015, and they were sexually intimate.
While the man wished they could be open about their relationship, the woman asked to keep it secret as she had concerns including about how their colleagues would perceive them.
The woman said she ended the relationship in December 2015. While they agreed to remain friends, they still had feelings for each other and continued to hang out together.
According to the woman, the pair and other colleagues went to a club on July 10, 2016, and later shared a taxi to return to their homes as they were headed in the same direction.
On the ride home, they became physically intimate and the woman invited the man over to her place for sex.
When they were at her home, the woman went to shower and, after sobering up, she realised she did not want to revisit the past romantic relationship with the man or give him hope that they were going to get back together.
“She was overwhelmed with regret for having invited him over and for telling him that they would engage in sex,” the judgment said.
After she told the man he should go home, the man was taken aback and pleaded with her to get back into a relationship with him.
During a heated conversation, the woman said the man was extremely persistent in trying to find out why she did not want to get back together with him.
She eventually stopped engaging in conversation, firmly instructed the man to leave, and went to her bed.
Instead of leaving, the man continued to plead with her. He also removed his shirt and pants and climbed into her bed.
Before she could react, the woman said he forcefully wrapped his arms around her from behind and restrained her physically.
As she struggled to push away his arms, she said the man reached into her shorts with his hand and sexually assaulted her.
In a state of immense shock and outrage, the woman said she pushed his hand away and demanded that he leave immediately, and he did so.
After the incident, she sent text messages to the man to apologise.
In her evidence subsequently, she said she had done so instinctively and tried to converse with the man to de-escalate any tensions and return the relationship between them to normalcy.
She said that it had not occurred to her then that she was sexually assaulted, and that she had not grasped the full gravity of the man’s actions. She said she felt responsible at the time for hurting his feelings and blamed herself for provoking him into taking out his anger on her.
She said she sought to maintain their friendship after the incident and there were subsequent occasions when she had revisited their romantic relationship.
She said she believed that she was acting under the warped belief that if the man genuinely loved her and if they entered into a romantic relationship again, then the incident in July 2016 would not matter in the grand scheme of things.
Sometime in mid-2017, she was exposed to the rise of the “Me Too” movement. After reading the stories of various survivors of sexual violence, she realised that she had been sexually assaulted.
She said she had come to understand that the prior romantic relationship between her and the defendant did not negate the fact that she did not give her consent.
She eventually told some of her university friends and a colleague what had happened.
On March 2, 2021, the woman wrote an e-mail to the senior management of Mindef in which she highlighted a sexual assault by a civilian officer.
Mindef strongly encouraged her to file a police report and she did so. She left Mindef in April 2021.
On Feb 28, 2022, the woman was told that the police decided not to take further action against the man. After seeking legal advice, she commenced the civil suit against him in July 2022.
In his defence, the man described their on-and-off romantic relationship as “complicated”, and that he ended his romantic interest around October 2016 after he realised that he was merely someone the woman would turn to whenever she was bored.
He added that he could not recall the exact events that transpired on the day of the incident.
Noting that while the man’s inability to recollect is “superficially plausible” given that the incident had occurred some years ago, District Judge Sia Aik Kor said she ultimately found this to be lacking in credibility.
She said the woman’s recollection of the events was cogent and convincing, and was corroborated by text messages exchanged between the pair.
The judge also said there was a strong thread of consistency that ran through her account of the incident with her friends and colleague, which were congruent with her testimony in court.
Her delay in bringing the matter to light had been adequately explained and did not detract from her credibility, the judge added.
The woman had explained that she had struggled for the longest time to start to even describe what had happened to her as it was extremely embarrassing and shameful to be able to say it out loud.
She also said that she had felt trapped as she and the man still shared the same social circles, and she feared that making a report would harm him or cause a rift among their friends.
As for the police’s decision to take no further action, the judge said that no evidence was offered as to the reasons behind this decision and that it could not be used to determine if the woman’s claims were true.
“It would be speculative for the court to infer from such a decision that the claimant’s allegations are untrue or fabricated,” she added.
District Judge Sia, however, did not grant the woman all her claims, including one for loss her earnings.
She said the woman failed to prove on a balance of probabilities that her loss of earnings during a period of unemployment after leaving Mindef was caused by the defendant’s act of battery.
https://www.straitstimes.com/singap...r-mindef-colleague-who-sexually-assaulted-her
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