Letter of the week: Promote a ‘play safe and report’ mindset in likely child abuse cases

As a father of a five-year-old, I was saddened to read that over the last 10 years, there have been at least eight child abuse cases that were not known to social services when the child was killed (

Info from Megan Khung’s pre-school gave no reason for ECDA to suspect girl’s abuse: MSF

, April 8).

We have a strong culture of “Don’t cause trouble”/“Mind your own business” in Singapore, and we’re often worried about personal repercussions if we were to report our neighbours, friends or even casual acquaintances.

I believe it’s not too far-fetched to say that this culture possibly contributed to the eight deaths in some way.

We should be encouraging a “Don’t think too much, play safe and report” mindset.

And to encourage the reporting of child abuse cases, I believe the Government can do more to assure the public that such reports will remain anonymous. 

These steps might prevent such tragedies from occurring.

Yeo Kim Boon