Son molested but authorities disinterested

In fact, bringing up two teenage sons has been fraught with challenges for Mr. Ong, a divorcé living in an interim rental flat paying $1,600 per month and was barred for 30 months from renting from the Housing Development Board (HDB). Mr. Ong is also behind with two months of rental arrears and faces the plight of being driven out of his housing by his landlord, EM Services.

Thankfully, one of the students, Wei Jie, witnessed the incident and notified Darren’s father, Mr Ong, who rushed down immediately to the school. Ironically, Wei Jie was chided by his form teacher for spouting rubbish and informing Mr. Ong on his own accord. Meanwhile, Darren was left in tears while he recovered from the shock of the incident.

After speaking to the form teacher, Mr. Ong was shocked to realize that the form teacher had let go of the perpetrator despite his act of bullying and molest. When confronted, the form teacher said, “This is the school rules and we have no right to hold the children back.” Mr. Ong’s request to meet the perpetrator’s parents was likewise rejected.

When Mr. Ong asked to see the higher management of the school, he was told that the head of department and the principal were in a meeting and were not available to see him.

Pushed to his wit’s end, Mr. Ong had no other option but to call the police. An Investigation Officer (IO) from the Singapore Police Force (SPF) soon arrived but he did not carry the necessary documentations for recording the statements from the various parties. The officer  even had to be prompted by Mr. Ong to retrieve pen and paper to take down notes. The following day, Mr. Ong went to his Neighborhood Police Post (NPP) to lodge a formal police report.

About two to three weeks later, Mr. Ong called the IO but was told that the case was still under investigation. On 31 Oct, he received the same response from the SPF and was puzzled that he had to be the one chasing the authorities on the matter and was also dissatisfied with the apparent lack of progress given the scale of the matter.

On 2 August 2012, the Shin Min Newspaper reported this incident but the public coverage was apparently insufficient to compel the school management to act and give Mr. Ong a satisfactory response on the matter.

In early November 2012, Mr. Ong went down personally to the Ministry of Education (MOE) Head Quarters (HQ) to alert the Ministry and was duly assured that they will handle the case and work with SPF, if required. In what seemed like an impasse after a few weeks, Mr. Ong called the MOE again only to have one of its officers tell Mr. Ong to not pursue the incident anymore and let it go.

In his anger, Mr. Ong retorted, “Would you let go if this incident happened to your son?” To which, the MOE officer woefully agreed and gone on to follow up on the case.

By this time, Mr. Ong was concerned that the authorities would likely gloss over the issue with the impending school holidays. His fear was also that there was nothing much he or the school could do after the primary six students moved on to their different respective secondary schools.

After a four months long tussle, Mr. Ong still has not had any opportunity to meet Victor or Victor’s parents. By then, Mr. Ong felt it was only fair that the Principal and Vice Principal asked Victor  to make a public apology.  Eventually it came down to the form teacher and she did ask him to apologize but it was done so half-heartedly at his desk. Given that his desk and Darren’s were rows of tables apart, it seemed at best, a weak attempt to close the matter.

At the crux of this entire incident lie two key matters, which we need to collectively delve into.

Firstly, the management of such cases of bullying within our schools given how bullying and taunting are typically prevalent anti-social behaviors. Are there proper and adequate protocols and processes to abide by to ensure the equitable and timely handling of such incidents? Or is the school management given  free reign and sole discretion to decide how it would best handle such incidents and for whose interests it would be safeguarding?

A source of Mr. Ong’s deep frustration is how he felt slighted,  when all he wanted was for the incident to be handled and resolved in a manner that’s fair and equitable. Yet the school management was apparently insensitive and passive, applied a “light touch” approach and had to be coerced into action only after Mr. Ong’s desperate attempts at pursuing the case with the various authorities.

Secondly, the emotional well being of the victims of bullying. When I asked Darren about how he feels towards Victor (the bully), he was uncomfortable, replying only after much hesitation.One can only imagine the emotional rollercoaster he had gone through on that fateful day as a 12-year-old -- shock, helplessness, anger, shame, embarrassment and loss.

How would the victim be able to pick himself up from the incident? Are there adequate social and emotional support and facilities within the school? Would teachers be informed and trained on how to handle such cases and understand the need to refer the victims to a school counselor? How can the victim gradually assimilate back into the same environment? What can the teacher do within his or her constraints to educate the bully on his misdeed and prevent it from occurring again?

We need to critically ask these questions not just for the sake of accountability but more so to develop a holistic and healthy environment for our students so they are able to excel academically and more importantly, develop themselves gradually as young adults with a healthy sense of self and the world around the them.

Perhaps it’s the case that anti-social behaviors like bullying are often undermined and downplayed so much that we have condoned it as a commonplace behavior and a perverse fact of childhood and growing up. Yet with Darren’s case, it can perhaps also be one whereby we start to recognize the importance of the social and emotional well being of students as a means of giving them a better chance at life and also as an integral part of education within our schools.