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The Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) expressed shock and disappointment at Workers' Party MP Raeesah Khan's revelation that she lied about accompanying a rape survivor to the police station during the August 2021 parliamentary sitting.

On Nov. 1, Khan was back in Parliament and admitted that she had not been present with the woman whose anecdote she had shared.

Rather, she had heard the survivor share it in a women's support group of which Khan was part of.

She added that a lot of people, including her family, did not know she is a survivor of sexual assault, until recently.

Khan's admission came after she was asked by the Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam in October to provide further details, such as the exact police station, in relation to that incident, to help with further investigations.

In response to the demand for answers, Khan declined to reveal further details, citing confidentiality and she also said she was unable to get in touch with the survivor.

Admitting she had made up the story, Khan apologised in Parliament and said: "In my haste, and in my passion to advocate for survivors like myself, I did [make] a mistake."

Broader implications of Khan's fabricated account about sexual assault

In response to Khan's admission, AWARE said the organisation is "shocked and disappointed" with the opposition politician's behaviour.

While the organisation "sympathises greatly" with Khan's reluctance to disclose her experience, the untruthful account she had shared "sets back advocacy around sexual violence in Singapore and does a disservice to other survivors", the statement read.

Sexual assault advocacy must be survivor-centric, AWARE said, but by sharing the anecdote from a support group without the survivor's permission is not survivor-centric. 

A support group is a safe space for sexual assault survivors to process their feelings and connect, and so "the sanctity of such spaces must be maintained".

This incident also perpetuated the myth that women frequently lie about assault, AWARE pointed out:

"Also, Ms Khan’s behaviour plays into the persistent myth that women frequently lie about assault—a myth that has long been used to discredit survivors of violence while enabling perpetrators to escape accountability. This trope, while ancient, has come to the fore even more in the years since MeToo gave voice to previously silenced stories—it’s why 41% of respondents to a 2019 Ipsos survey believed the baseless idea that false accusations of sexual harassment are a bigger problem in Singaporean society than unreported acts.

The fact remains that the vast majority of women who come forward about sexual assault, and associated acts of disrespect, are not lying. According to MHA, only 4% of sexual assault reports are found to be false. On the other hand, the majority of survivors don’t file police reports. Unfortunately, high-profile instances of untrue stories can disproportionately colour the way society views other testimonies from women."

AWARE said it hopes this incident does not undermine the need to deal with sexual assault more sensitively and effectively in Singapore, which was what Khan originally wanted to address.

Here's the full statement from AWARE:

Like many, we are shocked and disappointed to hear Raeesah Khan’s revelation that she had fabricated critical elements of her Aug. 3 parliamentary statement about police insensitivity towards a sexual assault survivor.

On Aug. 3, Ms Khan said in Parliament that she had accompanied a 25-year-old rape survivor to file a report of sexual assault at a police station three years ago. During the reporting process, a police officer allegedly asked the survivor questions about her clothing and consumption of alcohol, and this interaction made the survivor cry.

Today in Parliament Ms Khan revealed that she had not in fact accompanied the survivor at all, and that those experiences of insensitivity had actually been shared during a support group for sexual violence survivors, which Ms Khan had herself attended in the capacity of a survivor.

While we believe that her intentions—to raise the need for more sensitive first response from officials handling sexual violence cases—were sound, we are disappointed that Ms Khan lied about the details of this situation. Such behaviour only sets back advocacy around sexual violence in Singapore and does a disservice to other survivors, for various reasons.

Sexual assault advocacy must be survivor-centric, i.e. it must put the needs of survivors above all other considerations. Ms Khan’s decision to share the experiences of the support group participant without seeking permission was not survivor-centric. As she herself admitted, she should have known better: “In sharing an anecdote without consent, I disregarded the principle of consent in discussions around survivors, consent and sexual assault. As a survivor myself, I feel this failure deeply.”

As explained in our previous statement (Oct. 4) on this case, it is imperative to respect a sexual assault survivor’s confidentiality, and the measure of control that such confidentiality affords them. Survivors are unlikely to talk about the trauma they experience unless they feel they can do so safely, without their privacy being violated. This is why support groups—which play an important role in allowing survivors to process feelings, connect and recognise that they are not alone—impose rules of confidentiality upon participants. The sanctity of such spaces must be maintained, and survivors must continue to feel comfortable to attend them.

Also, Ms Khan’s behaviour plays into the persistent myth that women frequently lie about assault—a myth that has long been used to discredit survivors of violence while enabling perpetrators to escape accountability. This trope, while ancient, has come to the fore even more in the years since MeToo gave voice to previously silenced stories—it’s why 41% of respondents to a 2019 Ipsos survey believed the baseless idea that false accusations of sexual harassment are a bigger problem in Singaporean society than unreported acts.

The fact remains that the vast majority of women who come forward about sexual assault, and associated acts of disrespect, are not lying. According to MHA, only 4% of sexual assault reports are found to be false. On the other hand, the majority of survivors don’t file police reports. Unfortunately, high-profile instances of untrue stories can disproportionately colour the way society views other testimonies from women.

Ms Khan stated today that her “fear and shame” around her own assault played a role in her decision to conceal the true circumstances under which she heard the other survivor’s account. “I did not have the courage to publicly admit that I was part of [the support group],” she said in Parliament, adding that her assault “has traumatised [her] to this day”.

We are sorry to hear about Ms Khan’s own sexual assault experience and the lasting trauma she has faced. We sympathise greatly with her reluctance to disclose her experience, because we know—from the firsthand accounts from countless clients at AWARE’s Sexual Assault Care Centre—that it can be immensely difficult and traumatic to identify yourself as a victim-survivor of assault, particularly in the public eye. We hope that she can access further support to facilitate her own recovery journey.

Finally, we hope that this incident does not undermine the original matter that Ms Khan was trying to address: the need to deal with sexual assault more sensitively and effectively. This is an important societal issue that we hope will continue to be discussed and debated in Parliament.

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Top image via AWARE/Facebook, screenshot via MCI/YouTube video