It’s bad enough to be fall prey to brazen sexual assault, but it’s even worse when the police are insensitive to the plight of the victim.
A recent case was brought to light by Amanda Lai, who wrote a lengthy Facebook post detailing the traumatic experience that her colleagues faced during a Chinese New Year dinner at Cross Street’s Mouth Restaurant.
We’ll break it down in case of TL;DR.
- Her colleagues — identified as T and R in the post — were participants at a Lohei (Yu Sheng) dinner in Mouth Restaurant. They took a restroom break outside the restaurant, and upon walking back they were blocked by two men who claimed to be from Portugal. One of the two men allegedly harassed T by asking her to “take off her shirt and show him her boobs”, and despite T’s insistence of refusal, he moved in and molested her, Lai says.
- R screamed, which was enough to get the man’s hands off of T, and the two hurried back into the restaurant.
- T and R had their colleagues soon confront the two men, and attempts to deny them exit from the scene resulted in a small scuffle which was broken up by the perpetrator’s colleagues, but not before the alleged molester getting a head-butt in.
- Confronting the alleged molester’s colleagues about this outrage, they said “Oh, we thought they were friends.” They apologized for his actions and gave the creep’s name as ‘Bruno’, though that’s as far as they revealed.
- Enraged, T and R approached the restaurant with their colleagues for information on the company ‘Bruno’ is with, to which the restaurant management replied that the information is disclosed only to the police.
- T filed a case with the police the next day, where she was said to have endured an unpleasant interview by the police, whose questions were allegedly persuading T to drop the case. Questions such as “Are you sure you want to do this? If this goes to court, you’ll need to testify….” and “Are you sure they weren’t just trying to be friendly? You know, ang moh culture is different from ours…” were asked. In other words, they didn’t seem to be helpful.
“When this was told to me, I was furious. Furious at the entitled “Bruno” (and friend who egged him on) for his reprehensible behavior; furious at “Bruno’s” colleagues for dismissing it and shrugging it off; and furious at the restaurant for not doing more to protect the wellbeing of its customers,” said Lai.
“But I’m most disappointed by the fact that the police officer who took my colleague’s statement, didn’t take her complaint seriously. I worry that they will do nothing.”
Others also brought up times when police officers made it sound that it would be inconvenient to lodge reports on sexual assault cases:
Here’s hoping there’s progress with this case.
