SINGAPORE: For Leeba Ann Chacko, the sexual assault started when she was about nine years old. Her father, overwhelmed with taking care of her sick mother, would call her uncle over to help around the house.



“At first, it was just playful, tickling me and playing with me,” Ms Chacko said. “After a while, it started to escalate. While my uncle was tickling me, he would touch me in places I’d never been touched before.”





“At first it was just from the outside and then he would start going under my clothes. And at first it was just my top but after that he started moving down. And it was not just his hands. I remember the first time he used his mouth. I felt so disgusted and I remember going to the bathroom and washing myself.”

Ms Chacko said the assault took place over a month, and got much worse with each passing day.

Eventually, her family moved to the United States. It took her more than a year to relate the incident to her father, who she said protected her and supported her through the ordeal.

On Tuesday (Oct 17), the 25-year-old PhD student at the National University of Singapore (NUS) was among the women who took to social media relating sexual assault incidents with the hashtag #MeToo.





After posting this on her Facebook page on Tuesday, Ms Chacko told Channel NewsAsia she felt the movement allowed survivors like her a 'safe space' to share their experience.

The movement was reignited by Hollywood actress Alyssa Milano, who on Sunday, urged victims of sexual assault or harassment to tweet ‘me too’ in order to show the “magnitude of the problem”.



It was a response to the Harvey Weinstein scandal in which dozens of actresses came forward with accusations of sexual assault.



The movement has since hit Singapore, with women relating their own traumatic and often painful experiences. To Jolene Tan, who is head of advocacy and research at the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE), the #MeToo campaign has given survivors a platform to share their experiences of an issue that is widespread yet under-reported.



“According to a 2015 survey conducted by the Sexual Assault Care Centre, one in three young people have faced sexual violence, but few seek or receive help,” Ms Tan said.

“Minimising, judgmental or victim-blaming responses from friends, family and authorities do a lot of damage to survivors' willingness to get help.



"The wider conversation surrounding sexual assault - from online comments on sexual assault/harassment, to how the media portrays survivors - needs to change to ensure that survivors are better supported.”



And where it typically takes survivors of sexual assault and harassment months or even years to speak about their experience, Ms Tan said the #MeToo campaign has been “an empowering show of collective solidarity”.



“Many survivors feel emboldened to talk about what they have faced when others around them are doing so as well,” she said.



That was the case for Ms Chacko. Over the years, she opened up to a select few, and was also surprised when they in turn shared their own experiences. For many of her friends, it was the first time they were talking about it.



She said it highlighted the sense of stigma, shame and personal blame tied to the experience. And while she had shared her story with some of her friends, the #MeToo movement was what it took to eradicate those feelings completely.



“There is no way I would have spoken about this on social media if not for the movement,” she said.



“One thing I felt when I posted that message was there is no more shame attached to this. It’s something that I should be able to talk about without having to feel bad that something is wrong with me and that’s why it happened. It felt like I was sharing in a safe space because everyone is talking about it and so it’s okay for me to talk about it.”



Many men have also taken to social media to reflect their surprise and shock at how many of their mostly female friends have experienced sexual assault and harassment.



The movement sparked an offshoot response with men pledging to be more actively involved in calling out perpetrators of such behaviour with the hashtag ‘HowIWillChange’.



For 36-year-old Rei Poh, the movement “provoked” him to look at the issue of assault and harassment as not just “a woman’s problem”.



“Sometimes when we talk about sexual predators, we subconsciously think they are men who are far away,” he said.



“But ‘we’ (as men) can cause harm even without knowingly causing it. How we treat relationships, how we joke about women, how we were educated to think about roles of our gender.



“We need to start considering what role men play in this and how we can help with this issue.. and how we can stop this by not committing these mistakes,” Mr Poh said.



While the movement has been a platform to raise awareness, Ms Tan said the conversation needs to be kept going long after the viral online movement has died down.



“We should not only be taking action to eradicate sexual violence when it is on social media or in the news,” Ms Tan said.



“Sexual violence can have severe psychological impact on survivors, and our society needs to do more to respond supportively when individual survivors choose to speak out, and not just in the midst of viral online movements,” she said.

Ms Tan said those who have been reminded of their own experiences through the movement can call AWARE’s Sexual Assault Care Centre at 6779 0282 to speak to a trained professional.