New centre offers help for girls and women facing online attacks

Girls and women who face online harassment and attacks can get help at a new resource centre which will offer a helpline and counselling and legal services by the end of the year.

The support is initiated by a new non-profit organisation, SG Her Empowerment, or SHE, that was launched yesterday.

The centre - SheCares@SCWO - will be housed at the Singapore Council of Women's Organisations' premises in Waterloo Street.

For a start, it will have two full-time counsellors and a pool of about 100 volunteer lawyers from the Law Society Pro Bono Services for free legal support.

About $1 million has been raised for the centre's operations.

SHE is also working on simplifying the reporting process for harmful or offensive online content or sexual harassment.

The processes and standards now vary across social media platforms, said SHE's chairman, veteran lawyer Stefanie Yuen Thio. SHE aims to come up with a single set of guidelines that its volunteer lawyers or other users can refer to.

The new charity was set up by Ms Yuen Thio, the joint managing director at TSMP Law Corporation, to provide greater support for women and girls who face issues such as harassment.

Ms Simran Toor, a veteran lawyer, left WongPartnership in May to be SHE's chief executive.

Ms Sim Ann, Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and National Development, and Ms Low Yen Ling, Minister of State for Trade and Industry, are special advisers to the board of SHE.

Speaking to The Straits Times on Sept 9, Ms Sim said the new charity will carry on some of the work that the Sunlight Alliance for Action was exploring in the areas of online harm targeted at females.

The alliance, which was started by the Ministry of Communications and Information in July 2021, ended its tenure in July this year.

Ms Sim said: "We started off wanting to shine the light on the darker corners of the Internet, where women and girls don't feel so safe. Now we're actually building a lighthouse... We'll be looking at areas that are connected with online harm.

"Actually it can be very broad because it has to do with how women and girls are seen, the issue of objectification, the issue of stereotyping and that also feeds into the issue of self-perception and self-esteem."

On simplifying the reporting process, Ms Yuen Thio said: "It's not so much to get legal redress or compensation. The important thing is to get such content removed very quickly, because every moment it stays online is a trauma relived."

SHE is also discussing with the police to improve victims' reporting experiences.

Ms Yuen Thio added that SHE will work closely with social media platforms to identify new trends in online harm, discuss how best to raise public awareness, and get updates on users' reporting trends.

The charity is also in talks with institutes of higher learning on possible areas of research that would shed light on ways to improve the lives of women.

These include caregiving, gender biases and women in leadership.