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Singapore. An intruder entered the bedroom of a young trainee lawyer in the dead of night recently and attempted to rape her as her parents slept in the next room.

This happened in the family’s Yishun maisonette two weeks ago, shortly after the 22-year-old had returned from a Saturday night out with her friends.

Telling her story on condition that she be known only as Tan, she said: “I took about 15 minutes to clean up and when I got under my blanket, I heard a man’s voice at the foot of my bed telling me that I did not lock my front door.”

She explained that the door to her flat is the heavy type, which swings shut and latches by itself.

“I guess most of the time, we just let it swing shut,” she said, adding that the man could have slipped in after her.

She said that by the dim light of her night lamp, she could make out the intruder to be in his 20s, “rather good-looking and well-spoken.”

“When I told him to get out and that my parents were in the next room, he said, ‘Yes, and they are fast asleep.’ That was when I screamed,” she said.

He lunged forward and covered her mouth with his hand to stifle her, pinning her to the bed with his weight.

“Then he tried removing my underwear. I tried to kick and scratch but could not penetrate his thick jacket. Then I tried to grab something from my bedstand to hit him with,” she said.

“That probably took his attention off me and I could feel his weight lift off me. I pushed his hand away from my mouth and screamed as loudly as I could. That woke up my parents and brothers,” she said.

Her family chased after him but the intruder dashed out the front door, running past a neighbor who was smoking along the corridor.

Tan said her neighbor thought the stranger was her boyfriend, and made no effort to stop him.

Her brother drove her to a police post, where she filed a report.

“I was told the case has been classified as outrage of modesty as there is no classification under the law for attempted rape here,” she said.

Police confirmed that the incident was reported at a police post in Yishun on Jan. 21, and that they were investigating the case.

Under the law, anyone found guilty of assaulting or using criminal force on another person, intending to outrage her modesty, could be jailed for up to two years, caned or fined.

Tan said she felt violated, and that the safety and sanctity of her home and bedroom had been violated as well.

She said: “I jump at every sound, every shadow and I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since that night.”

She added: “To think I lived for three years in East London, where the crime rate is said to be high, while studying for my law degree and nothing of this sort happened. Yet in safe Singapore, this happened.”

Her experience is similar to an incident in September last year, in which a teacher had her chest and groin caressed by a man who had reached in through the window of her ground-floor bedroom in her house in Pasir Panjang.

That intruder, since caught, pleaded guilty to outrage of modesty. No information is available on the penalty handed down to him.

In the first half of last year, there were 707 cases of outrage of modesty — 60 cases, or 9 per cent, more than the 647 cases in the corresponding period the year before.

Police urge the public to protect themselves and their loved ones by avoiding dim, secluded places, enlisting a family member or friend as company when returning home alone or late, and being alert to their surroundings.

Meanwhile, Tan said she is thinking about getting a dog — “none of those toy breeds, but one that is fierce enough to keep intruders out.”

Reprinted courtesy of Straits Times Indonesia. To subscribe to Straits Times Indonesia and/or the Jakarta Globe call 021 2553 5055.