Here's a new twist in the unfolding saga regarding Teenage magazine's victim-blaming "Dear Kelly" column from its November issue: its author and key responder, Kelly Chopard, might not even exist.

Since it was first discovered and anger erupted online on Friday, Teenage posted a stock comment initially in response, followed by two longer statements, one posted to their Facebook page and another supposedly written directly by "Kelly" herself, published on their website.

Both efforts failed to quell sentiment against the publication and its column, but this, if true, would further aggravate the situation.

Facebook page The Local Rebel posted screenshots of a series of tip-off messages sent to them by an unidentified user, who claims her friend interned with Teenage and saw people, whose names were certainly not "Kelly" or "Kelly Chopard", working on the column:

Here's the Facebook post where these screenshots came from:

We decided to verify these allegations. First, in the "Dear Kelly" section, there is a page that bears a photo of a Kelly Chopard, above a bio:

Her bio is also carried on the page bearing her apology on Teenage's website:

It appears that she has been around in the counselling circuit for several decades now, so we tried searching for any signs of her online.

We only found a children's book author by the name of "Kelly Chopard", one of whose titles looks like this:

Sure enough, as is explained in one of the messages from the whistleblower, her name cannot be found on the list of registered counsellors with the Singapore Association of Counsellors — we looked under C and K for good measure:

However, we understand that not all practising counsellors in Singapore are registered here.

To qualify to be registered, one needs to clock at least 600 hours of face-to-face counselling, as well as possess certain minimum academic qualifications; the list of required documents is here:

So it would be hard to argue that Chopard isn't a legitimate practising counsellor, because many do without registering themselves with the SAC.

However, the allegation that from the ex-intern's experience, two staff writers (whose names to her knowledge were not Kelly Chopard) ghost-wrote the "Dear Kelly" column in turn, remains.

Meanwhile, higher-profile groups and individuals have spoken out against the victim-blaming stances the magazine and columnist adopted, as well as their follow-up apologies.

Women's rights group AWARE wrote this letter to the magazine's editorial staff, while celebrity host and actress Oon Shu An posted this open letter:

If Kelly is real, let's hope Teenage clarifies, so that we can move on from this. If Kelly isn't an actual person, we hope Teenage can take personal problems from teenagers (like this one) with utmost seriousness and not employ unqualified employees to give unprofessional advice.

More on the Teenage "Dear Kelly" saga:

Teenage magazine’s Dear Kelly gives victim-blaming “advice” to girl who was raped

Teenage magazine responds to “Dear Kelly” rape-victim-blaming outrage with Facebook comment

Teenage magazine ‘Dear Kelly’ apologises for ‘tough love’ advice for rape victim. Made matters worse.

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