For four years, a Singapore journalist was pursued by a woman who believed the two were married and had a child together. It began with an autograph request at a taxi stand around 2005, when the journalist was a television news anchor, and ended with a court order in March 2011.
The journalist later told the story in detail. It is a case study in how slowly harassment can build, and in how hard it is to be taken seriously while it is happening.
From fan letters to daily emails
The first signs seemed harmless: a short, friendly fan letter and a brief encounter outside a broadcasting building. The journalist moved on to an MBA and a job in private equity, then joined a national newspaper in 2008. After the first article appeared under that byline, a second, more effusive letter arrived. Instinct, she said, told her to keep it.
Emails then came almost daily. One carried a photograph of the sender. They described an imagined marriage, alternating between declarations of love and accusations of infidelity, and they included the sender’s address and phone numbers. A psychiatrist the journalist knew read a few and said they were consistent with paranoid schizophrenia and erotomania, the delusional belief that someone is in love with you.
That diagnosis complicated everything. The journalist sympathised with the sender’s mother, who looked after her, and hesitated over going to the police. She also worried that devotion could turn to hostility. At the peak, eight emails a day were arriving.
Living on guard
The toll was practical as well as emotional. Sleep gave way to insomnia, and migraines brought heavy medical bills. A weekend bookshop habit, mentioned in a Saturday newspaper column, led to an email claiming the sender had waited there all weekend for a “date”. The journalist stopped going to Orchard Road alone.
In June 2009, an email said the sender wanted to withdraw her savings, hire a private investigator to find the journalist’s home and take her on holiday. That was when the first police report was filed. Officers counselled the woman, and the emails stopped. Voicemails to the office line began, and so did calls to the newspaper’s hotline asking about the journalist’s movements.
A second report followed, and the woman was sent to the Institute of Mental Health for a three-week psychiatric evaluation. After her release, she sent flowers and love letters on the journalist’s birthday in August and warned her not to tell the police. A third report was filed in September 2010. The calls then stopped, which felt worse than the calls themselves, because the journalist had no idea what the woman might do next.
Her employer’s human resources and legal teams sent the woman a warning to stay away, and security staff were given her photograph. The journalist changed her habits. She checked the lobby before crossing it, skipped lunch to avoid public areas and waited for the lobby to close to the public before calling a cab. Her family tightened security at home, and a cousin taught her basic self-defence moves.
Friends and family urged her to relax now that reports had been made. She felt unheard and withdrew from them.
A light sentence, a heavy cost
In December 2010, the police told her that the Attorney-General’s Chambers had found enough evidence to bring eight harassment charges. In March 2011, the charges were reduced to four. The woman pleaded guilty and was fined S$1,000 on each, S$4,000 in all, the minimum per charge. At the time, the maximum fine for a single count was S$5,000. She was also ordered to stay away from the journalist.
The journalist felt the outcome did not match four years of fear. She resigned from the newspaper later that year to rebuild her health, and said her insomnia, migraines and anxiety had mostly eased. She went back to ballet and to going out alone. She also said she planned to write about harassment law and to push for stalking to be taken more seriously.
How the law has changed
The legal landscape is different now. The Protection from Harassment Act (POHA), in force since November 2014, aims to protect people from harassment and stalking, online or in real life. It replaced sections of the Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) Act, covered acts conducted online and added jail terms to the penalties. That is 12 years ago, and three years after the sentencing described above.
Unlawful stalking is an offence under section 7 of the Act. Behaviour that can count includes following someone, loitering near their home or business, leaving gifts despite being asked to stop, and keeping someone under surveillance. Several of these match what the journalist described. Police material states that the offence is punishable by up to 12 months’ imprisonment, a fine of up to S$5,000, or both, and that repeat offenders face up to two years’ jail, a fine of up to S$10,000, or both.
Victims also have civil routes. One legal guide notes that compensation of up to S$20,000 can be sought in the Protection from Harassment Court under simplified proceedings, and another says protection orders can legally stop a stalker from continuing the behaviour. A breach of such an order is itself an offence, which can support a fresh police report.
For the journalist, the lesson lay beyond the courtroom. Her life, she concluded, should not be controlled by another person’s actions. A person being stalked needs to know how to protect herself and not be afraid to say enough is enough.