TW: TRANSPHOBIA, SEXUAL ASSAULT, MENTIONS OF SUICIDE, INCARCERATION, STATE-SANCTIONED GENDERED VIOLENCE

Summary of Harvey's Background – Justice4Harvey Carrd Site

 

Vickreman Harvey Chettiar (“Harvey”) is an autistic, transgender woman in Singapore. She was detained in the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) in February 2014 after being charged in Court for 2 criminal offences, as her mental fitness to plead and stand trial was automatically in question under the law because of having Autism.

The United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (“UN CRPD”) states that “the existence of a disability shall in no case justify a deprivation of liberty”. This thus prohibits accused persons from having their mental fitness questioned and from being detained for psychiatric assessment simply due to being neurodivergent. Singapore is a signatory to the UN CRPD, but the Parliament of Singapore has yet to modify the local laws to meet its treaty obligations. As such, the Singapore laws required and were unable to prevent Harvey’s detention in IMH for mental assessment.

Harvey is a non-operative transgender woman. This means that she has not and may not desire to get gender-affirming surgery to the extent demanded by the law in order to be recognized as a woman.

As such, the Singapore Law classifies Harvey as a male person.
She was hence incarcerated in the male prison ward at the IMH.

On 24th February 2014, Harvey was raped in a bathroom shower cubicle by a man whom she did not know prior to her detention in IMH – the same man then repeatedly molested Harvey over the course of a week, using intimidation to obtain her acquiescence.

The rape and repeated molestation led to her developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

On 26th November 2014, Harvey filed a police report against the rapist; and received a response from the Singapore Police Force on 2nd March 2016, stating that they would not be taking any “further action” against the rapist, and they will then be closing the case.

This was both confusing and extremely frustrating for Harvey, as she was (and currently still continues) fighting to bring her rapist to justice. Harvey fears that she may not have been believed at the time of making the police report in 2014, because there were still criminal charges pending against her at the time – but since those criminal charges were all dropped in December 2015, she was frustrated that in March 2016, the police were still unwilling to believe her, as she does not fit the idealised image of a victim.

 

Structural Factors against Survivors of Sexual Assault

Harvey does not fit the idealised image of a victim along the lines of class, race and gender, but this does not and should not make her any less of a rape survivor. However, not matching such an idealised image has caused her to be further undermined, excluded, doubted and dehumanised by the State’s machinery.

The consequence of this rejection is the obstruction of Harvey’s access to justice and support. This deepened, complicated and prolonged her psychological trauma. Intense bureaucracy and its rigid criteria, together with conditioned judgement by both society and the State, also contribute in no small part to this obstruction.

As Harvey was facing multiple criminal charges (of all of which she was ultimately acquitted and/or discharged) prior to and at the time of her rape, she was placed under intense scrutiny and doubt, such that her identity was reduced to solely that of a “criminal” – making it difficult for the police to accept that she, too, is a victim of crime.

Simply put, Harvey’s lived truth that she is a victim of rape has been painfully and violently rejected, and she has been denied access to the justice and support she needs and deserves.

 

Consequences of Harvey’s Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

On 12th December 2016, Harvey filed a civil lawsuit against IMH, hoping to get some measure of justice in connection to her rape. However, she neither could afford to pay lawyers nor obtain pro bono legal representation (as no lawyer was willing to do free work for a civil lawsuit), so her lawsuit was struck out on 4th March 2021.

During the course of her lawsuit, on Monday 3rd February 2020, she was at the Supreme Courts Building for a Pre-Trial Conference for her civil lawsuit. There, Harvey had experienced a flashback caused by her condition of PTSD (which she had developed as a result of the rape and repeated molestation), and accidentally damaged a marble table. Harvey was arrested for this act, and is currently still being prosecuted by the Attorney-General's Chambers for Mischief.

As Mischief is a Penal Code offence, Harvey was able to obtain pro bono legal representation under the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme. Her lawyer advised her to plead guilty in order to prevent Harvey from being incarcerated in a male prison, which would be extraordinarily traumatic for a transgender woman. However, pleading guilty will directly contradict the assertion that she consistently maintained; that she had not intentionally destroyed the table, but rather she had accidentally destroyed the table as a result of experiencing a PTSD flashback. Hence, while Harvey is grateful for her lawyer’s help and support, she does not want to plead guilty, and instead wants to uphold her lived truth, even in the face of ultimate death.

 

Barriers to Justice cause Prolongation of Victims’ Trauma

Despite being a survivor seeking justice for the life-altering harm inflicted upon her, Harvey is now facing further criminal charges for offences under the Protection From Harassment Act (PoHA), for lashing out at a policeman on Instagram (which had not caused physical harm to any human being) and for doxx’ing her rapist – which she did out of frustration and anger at him escaping justice for more than 7 years and 8 months (and counting) for the sexual assaults which had been inflicted upon Harvey in February 2014.

The Cautioned Statements recorded by the police from Harvey for the two PoHA charges are published on her Instagram account at:

• Doxx'ing – https://www.instagram.com/p/CWuaXd3FUCZ
• Lashing Out – https://www.instagram.com/p/CWucVSrliP8

Further, as criminal charges under PoHA are excluded from the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme, Harvey is not able to get pro bono criminal representation funded by the State for these 2 charges.

Nonetheless, Harvey continues to be prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Chambers for both the Mischief and 2 PoHA charges.

 

Consequences for Harvey of a Criminal Conviction

As a non-operative transgender woman, the Singapore Law (and in effect, the Singapore Prison Service) classifies her as a male person, therefore incarceration would lead to terminally dire consequences:

• Being placed inside a male prison environment, the gendered violence of strip-searches being conducted by male authority figures, and her being much more vulnerable to sexual assault, as she would be placed in a cell with up to 3 or 7 male prisoners; and forced to shower and defecate in front of these men, which would be extremely sexually humiliating and re-traumatizing for Harvey.

• Incarceration under classification as a male person would also lead to an immediate and long-term (i.e. years longer than the sentence itself) detransition in her appearance – Section 88(2) of the Prison Regulations mandates that her hair “shall be cut close”.

• Harvey has an inherent fear of and discomfort with men, so the prospect of being inside a cell with men, on top of the aforestated consequences of long-term detransition and being subjected to strip-searches conducted by men, would contribute to extremely severe, and hence suicide-inducing, mental health trauma for her.

 

Appeal to the AG to #SpareVickremanHarveyChettiar

We appeal to the Attorney-General, Mr Lucien Wong Yuen Kai, to have the Attorney-General’s Chambers withdraw all the pending criminal charges against Harvey, and thereby spare her from the worse fate for her than death, of detransition and traumatisation.

We also call upon members of the public who are sympathetic to Harvey’s plight, to support her and empower our petition through:

• Sharing and spreading awareness of this petition among your social circles, whether from work, school, religious groups, etc.

• Writing to your respective Member of Parliament to ask him/her to support our appeal to the Attorney-General. You can find the full list of MPs, and narrow down by constituency or name, at this website: https://www.parliament.gov.sg/mps/list-of-current-mps

• Writing to the President of Singapore, Madam Halimah Binte Yacob, at halimah_yacob@istana.gov.sg, to appeal to her to entreat the Attorney-General to drop all criminal charges against Harvey.

• Requesting your respective organisations, if you have any such affiliation, to make statements supporting this petition’s objective.

• Reaching out to human rights organisations around the world to inform them about Harvey’s situation and this petition’s objective.

• Standing in spiritual, and especially material, solidarity with the multiple marginalised communities to which Harvey belongs, i.e. the neurodivergent, the transgender and the brown communities.

• Following Harvey on her public Instagram account @vickreman at https://instagram.com/vickreman where she advocates regularly for the other members of Singapore’s marginalised communities.

 

Footnote – Harvey's Advocacy Efforts and Family Circumstances

Harvey is active in advocacy for others, and spent the afternoon of Saturday 25 December 2021, i.e. Christmas Day, hand-delivering her personal letter to the Istana to appeal to President Madam Halimah Binte Yacob, to spare the life of an intellectually-disabled man who has been condemned to death for getting deceived into trafficking 42.72 grams of heroin – Harvey's personal letter is published on her Instagram account at https://www.instagram.com/p/CaSQzO9BvGF

Tragically, Harvey’s grandfather died on the morning of Boxing Day, and she has been grief-stricken by his sudden death; consequent to which her grandmother suffered a stroke on 4th February 2022, and remains hospitalized as the prognosis is poor and recovery unlikely.