Anecdotes have been shared in Parliament but this is the first case of deliberate lying in Parliament that has been found out.
MPs often use anecdotes of anonymous people to make their point. A recent example was when WP Sylvia Lim and Pritam Singh shared the same anecdote of a resident who had to sell his/her flat at a loss of $100,000. As it turned out, the anecdote was inaccurate and the facts were clarified by Minister for National Development Desmond Lee. (You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_wsAn1yPTA)
Parliament is not a place where you can spout all sorts of nonsense because people will take you at your word, said Bertha Henson in a Facebook post.
Raeesah Khan has painted a picture of herself as a crusader who accompanied a rape victim to the police, said Bertha.
Bertha noted that this was in a prepared speech and not some quick response to an ambush question.
As it turned out, she did not accompany the rape victim to make a police report. It was a ‘sharing’ at a rape support group.
“Her story has changed too many times, mainly under the guise of ‘confidentiality’ and ‘consent’, in her responses to requests for details – and people rush to agree that confidentiality and consent are important to observe. Even AWARE says so,” said Bertha.
“This is not an innocuous anecdote as fingers are pointed at the police for being so unsympathetic towards victims. This anecdote had repercussions and we must expect the police will go find out which police station and which cops,” Bertha added.
“RK says that she felt embarrassed to say that this surfaced at a rape support group, so she changed her story. She did not want people to know that she is a ‘survivor’ of an assault abroad when she was a student.
That’s weird because I thought it was a ‘housemate’ abroad who was a victim, as she said in an FB post,” observed Bertha.
“In any case, there was still no need to embellish the story by making herself out to be the do-gooder.
“The problem is that when people talk about rape victims, it is politically incorrect to ask questions about the veracity. We give them the benefit of the doubt and wouldn’t think that they were making up stories. We nod our heads at words like confidentiality and consent – without thinking that they might be covers for something else. It is hypocritical of RK to talk about confidentiality and consent when she didn’t observe either. She really knew nothing more about the case – in fact the victim might not even have said which police station she went to at the sharing!
What RK has done is to destroy this ‘benefit of the doubt’ we give to victims. That’s the great disservice she has done for the cause of women.
Not to mention degrading the standing of MPs by blatant lying.”
[irp posts=”9881″ name=”Raeesah says Police ‘part of the solution’ after alleging police’s mishandling of rape survivor”]
