Transcript of Remarks by Ms Sun Xueling, Minister of State, Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Social and Family Development on the Sidelines of Her Visit to the OneSAFE Centre During SPF Sexual Crime Awareness Seminar 2024

1. The OneSAFE Centre has been fully operational since April last year. And we have seen 90 victims who have been examined at the OneSAFE Centre since. The OneSAFE Centre has interview rooms, examination rooms, and also waiting areas for family and kin; it even has a playroom should there be young children who are unfortunate victims of sexual crime. It is important that we make sure that we have support that is provided to young - in some cases - children who are affected by sexual crime; and that is why the OneSAFE Centre is designed to give them that sense of safety and security, in particular after they have been traumatised by a sexual incident.

2. It is important to provide holistic support to victims of sexual crime, in particular, if there are young children involved. One such partnership that MHA is pursuing is a collaboration with SUSS. Through this partnership, students who are taking out a course in the Master’s in Forensic Psychology are enabled to participate as a volunteer, as a Victim Care Officer, with the Ministry of Home Affairs. They thus put their counselling and psychology training to good use, providing support to victims of sexual crime. Apart from this partnership, the Ministry of Home Affairs is also working actively with the Ministry of Education. There will be a resource package which will be rolled out in the second half of 2024, to better equip counsellors in schools. This is so they know how to address difficult topics, such as sexual crime, with students. In this resource package, there are also scenarios and more details about what are harmful sexual behaviours. We think that this is important in our early intervention measures to better equip our young with an understanding of what constitutes sexual crime.

3. Counsellors at our MOE schools have been trained to work with students who come to them with perhaps a variety of issues – some psychological, some emotional, some dealing with family issues. The reason why we are rolling out a resource package that is focused on harmful sexual behaviours is because we see a rise in sexual crime amongst youth offenders. This could be due to changing societal attitudes towards sexual behaviour and what perhaps may, in their view, be sexual crime. So, we think it is important to have a resource package so that counsellors know that what are the red flags to look out for, what are the questions they could use to facilitate discussions with students. And this resource package can also be used to educate our young students as to what constitutes harmful sexual behaviours and what are the sexual crimes that they have to be careful about.