This news is regarding to the video clip located here

ELECTRIC NEWS

MUM’S HORROR
‘That’s my daughter’
Outraged mother of teenage victim in video-bashing clip confronts attackers but decides not to make police report
By Dawn Chia

June 20, 2006

HER heart sank when she read about the bashing of a teenage girl that was caught on video.

The girl was brutally kicked and punched, and then had her top forcibly removed by three other girls.

As she read the report in The New Paper on Thursday, Madam Amy’s pain quickly turned to anger.

Maternal instinct told her that the victim in the assault could be her 13-year-old daughter.

Madam Amy (not her real name) called The New Paper hotline and asked to view the clip.

To protect the identity of the victim as she is still a minor, her mother cannot be named.

We will call the victim Cindy.

All it took was 10 seconds of footage and Madam Amy mumbled: It’s my daughter.

Madam Amy, who runs a small business, told The New Paper: ‘I recognised the tube top. The shirt is one of her favourite T-shirts.

‘It’s my daughter who was beaten up and stripped.’

Then, her older daughter received a call on Thursday night from one of the girls who claimed to be behind the alleged assault.

Madam Amy said: ‘My older daughter said the assailants asked me not to pursue the matter as it was a thing in the past. I was very angry.

‘How can I let it go? If there’s evidence, I must make sure they’re punished for assaulting my daughter and humiliating her like that.’

She confronted Cindy with the report and asked if she was the victim.

Cindy told her to ‘let it go’.

To Madam Amy, that was as good as an admission.

Madam Amy said the incident took place sometime in April this year.

PLAYED TRUANT

She claimed Cindy, a Secondary 1 student, started playing truant after the incident - she would only attend classes once a week.

Despite pleas to find out the reason behind her truancy, Cindy refused to say a word.

Madam Amy, who is in her late 30s, described her daughter as ‘rebellious and easily influenced by her friends’.

She said: ‘I suspected that something bad happened to her, but she wouldn’t tell me what was troubling her.

‘It was only after one of our regular visits to a temple that a medium told us the truth.’

This was a few weeks into Cindy’s truancy.

Madam Amy claimed the medium suddenly turned to Cindy and asked if she had been beaten and bullied by her friends.

The girl turned pale, denied it feebly and didn’t say a word after that.

Madam Amy couldn’t make a police report then as she didn’t have any evidence.

She did not know that the assailants had recorded the assault on a handphone.

Around this time, her older daughter, who also knows the assailants, told her that the girls wanted to see her.

Madam Amy readily agreed.

She said: ‘There was a gang of them waiting for me at a void deck.

‘They said my (younger) daughter had done things which irked them and their assault on her was her own doing.

‘Then they told me to forget about the whole matter as there was nothing I could do.’ (See report on facing page.)

She said most of the girls seemed to be older than 15. Cindy was with them during the confrontation.

Madam Amy said she was both angered and saddened when Cindy defended the assailants and told her mother to ‘forget it’.

For weeks after that, Madam Amy and her husband were at a loss, until her maid told her about The New Paper report on the video-bashing on Thursday.

The 4 1/2-minute long video clip, circulated via Bluetooth, was sent to the The New Paper by a reader.

On hearing about the report, Madam Amy’s heart leapt.

The video could be the evidence she needed to take action against the assailants.

But she was faced with a dilemma.
Her older daughter and husband were against making a police report.

Madam Amy said: ‘My husband doesn’t want to blow up the matter as he’s worried that the girls’ futures may be ruined.

‘On the other hand, I can’t let my younger daughter’s assailants go scot-free. They have to be responsible for their actions.’

MET ASSAILANTS’ PARENTS

On Saturday night, Madam Amy asked Cindy to arrange for a meeting with the assailants’ parents.

It was then she learnt that two of the four assailants came from single-parent families and felt sorry for them.

Madam Amy said: ‘My husband and I decided to give the girls a chance and not make a police report this time.

‘They’re still so young and we don’t want this to be a blemish on their lives.

‘But I warned them that if it happened again, I’d not hesitate to make a police report with the video clip as evidence.’

The girl who was alleged to have recorded the bashing using a friend’s handphone has been disciplined by her father.

After The New Paper report, at least two popular forums have posted threads discussing and condemning the bashing.

There were also links for users to download the video clip which showed Cindy being surrounded by three girls, then kicked and punched at an HDB staircase landing.

A fourth girl was not clearly caught on the video.

At one point, Cindy nearly had her shorts forcefully removed.

Cindy has since promised her mother that she would return to school and turn over a new leaf.

SECOND CHANCE

Madam Amy hopes that Cindy’s teachers and principal would give her daughter a chance as she had skipped school for more than a month.

She said: ‘After my husband and I spoke to her, she decided that she wanted to start afresh and go back to school.

‘We hope she’ll remember and learn from this nasty incident and not go back to her old ways.’

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——————————————————————————–
It all began with a condom…

YOUR daughter tried to seduce one of our boyfriends and stared at one of us.

That’s why we beat her up.

This was what Madam Amy was told when she met the three girls who were allegedly behind Cindy’s assault.

Madam Amy said oe of the girls claimed that Cindy gave a condom to her boyfriend, implying that she (Cindy) wanted to have sex with him.

Said Madam Amy: ‘My daughter could have meant it as a joke and it doesn’t mean that she was interested in the guy.

‘They said she also stared at another girl and looked as if she wanted to challenge her to a fight.

‘That was why they arranged to meet her to teach her a lesson.’

Madam Amy doesn’t know why her daughter went to meet the girls, instead of confiding in her about the problems.

INTIMIDATION

She claimed she told the girls that they were wrong to hit her daughter no matter what Cindy did to them.

Madam Amy said: ‘I’m her mother, and should be the one to discipline her if she’s wrong.

‘They were her peers and shouldn’t lay a finger on her, what more humiliate her by taking off her shirt and recording the assault.’

Cindy’s grandmother, who accompanied Madam Amy to meet the girls, alleged that the girls tried to intimidate them into not pursuing the case.

The grandmother, who also saw the video clip on Friday, claimed: ‘They warned us to drop the case and not pursue it as it was my granddaughter who asked for it.

‘They were very hostile and rude.

‘When we asked to speak to their parents, they said there was no point as their parents wouldn’t bother.’

-Vincent