WNU v WNV

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Patrick Tay Wei Sheng
• Judgment Date: 16 June 2023
• Neutral Citation: [2023] SGFC 18
• Court: Family Court (Singapore)
• Docket Number: SS No 2162 of 2022
• Hearing Date: 08 March 2023
• Citation: [2023] SGFC 18
• Year: 2023
• Plaintiff Counsel: The applicant in person
• Defendant Counsel: The respondent in person.
• Subject Matter: Family Law,Family violence,Orders for protection,Personal protection order
• Published date: 23 June 2023

District Judge Patrick Tay Wei Sheng:

The parties are spouses. The applicant sought, as against the respondent, personal protection orders (each, a “PPO”) for herself and their two daughters. She also sought a domestic exclusion order (“DEO”) to remove the respondent from their shared residence. She claimed that the respondent had hit her and the daughters. She added that the respondent had removed a bicycle that she had been using to perform food deliveries.

Having heard the evidence, I declined to grant the application. First, the evidence did not establish the allegations of family violence. Second, there was no necessity for the PPOs or the DEO sought.

These are the reasons for my decision.

Background

The parties were married on 25 August 2020. Their daughters were born in 2020 and 2021 respectively.

According to the Complaint¹ – the process by which a PPO application is originated – and the depositions of the applicant, five incidents of family violence form the basis of this application. In each of the first four incidents, the respondent had allegedly hit the applicant or a daughter of theirs. In the fifth incident, the respondent had allegedly removed the bicycle that the applicant had been using to perform food deliveries.

Applicable law

Family violence of any form is unacceptable. The Family Court will take a firm stance against it by granting, where necessary for the protection of a victim, PPOs and other orders of protection (UNQ v UNR [2020] SGHCF 21 (“UNQ”) at [1]). Severe consequences may follow the breach of such orders. A person who wilfully breaches a PPO commits a criminal offence and may be liable on conviction to imprisonment for six months and a fine of $2,000 (see s 65(8) of the Women’s Charter 1961 (2020 Rev Ed) (the “Charter”)). This is also an arrestable offence. A police officer who has reason to suspect that a person has wilfully contravened a PPO may arrest that person without a warrant (see s 65(11) of the Charter and ss 2, 17(1), and 429(19) of the Criminal Procedure Code 2010 (2020 Rev Ed)). Given these severe consequences, the Family Court will scrutinise allegations of family violence carefully when determining an application for a PPO (UNQ at [28]).

One facet of this caution is that respondents to PPO applications must be apprised of and afforded opportunity to meet the allegations made against them. Specifically, the Complaint must set out all the facts and allegations that are material to the application. It is for this reason that Kan Ting Chiu J held in Teng Cheng Sin v Law Fay Yuen [2003] 3 SLR(R) 356 (“Teng Cheng Sin”) that an omission of an allegation from the Complaint may preclude the admission of evidence on that allegation at the trial of the PPO application. This preclusion may extend even to evidence on allegations based on events that occurred after the Complaint had been filed, at least where those events are disputed (Teng Cheng Sin at [20]).

In the context of the Protection from Harassment Act 2014 (2020 Rev Ed) (the “POHA”), the High Court in Lai Kwok Kin v Teo Zien Jackson [2020] 5 SLR 389 (“Lai Kwok Kin”) held that the court need not necessarily exclude evidence on all post-application events when hearing an application for a protection order (“PO”). See Kee Oon J explained that it would not be practical for a fresh application for a protection order to be made in respect of such post-application events and that doing so would “clog up and unnecessarily complicate the existing legal process for PO applications”. Nevertheless, See J took pains to confine these observations to the context of the POHA and emphasised that the protection order regimes under the Charter and the POHA operate in different fashions (at [58]–[59]).

Still, in a PPO application, the holding in Teng Cheng Sin that evidence on post-application events is inadmissible on account of the surprise it would occasion to the respondent remains binding on the Family Court. Further, this concern about occasioning surprise to the respondent must apply a fortiori to allegations based on events that preceded the filing of the application but that were omitted from the Complaint. These pre-application events would be well within the knowledge of the applicant at the time of the filing of the Complaint. If the applicant chooses to omit these pre-application events from the Complaint, a respondent may fairly contend that the applicant had chosen to forgo the pursuit of any allegations based on these events.

Pursuant to s 65(1) of the Charter, two conditions must be fulfilled before a PPO may be granted. First, the family violence must have been committed or must have been likely to be committed. Second, the PPO must be necessary for the protection of the family member. These conditions must be proven by the applicant on a balance of probabilities:

Protection order

65.—(1) The court may, upon satisfaction on a balance of probabilities that family violence has been committed or is likely to be committed against a family member and that it is necessary for the protection of the family member, make a protection order restraining the person against whom the order is made from using family violence against the family member. Family violence

I begin with the two primary incidents of alleged family violence, as set on which the applicant relied in support of her application. These incidents were the most recent incidents set out in the Complaint.

Primary incidents

The applicant claimed that the respondent had on 13 October 2022 thrown glassware against the main door of the shared residence in the wee hours of the morning and had hit her on the arm with a “shoes shelving” in the evening. She stated that these acts had caused a “tennis ball size” bruise on her arm. She added that the respondent had on 15 December 2022 removed a bicycle that she had been using to perform food deliveries and thereby affected her livelihood.

For the incident on 13 October 2022, the applicant exhibited photographs of the broken glassware and of the bruise on her arm. She also tendered a medical report that recorded a “bruise measuring 7cm by 5.3cm on her upper left arm” and her communication to the doctor that the respondent had “pushed a standing rack/self onto [her] and it hit her left arm.”

The respondent did not deny that he had thrown the glassware but disputed the allegations that he had intentionally or knowingly hurt the applicant by pushing the rack into her arm. He testified that he had, at the material time, been attempting to head out of the shared residence for work when the applicant had blocked his path. He explained that he had pushed the rack, which had been adjacent to his path, to create space for him to pass her when the rack had fallen onto her.²

The applicant did not challenge this explanation of the respondent. Instead, she simply reiterated that she had suffered a bruise in consequence of the incident.³ But the mere fact that the applicant had suffered a bruise from the rack coming into contact with her shed no light on how the events that had caused the rack to come into contact with her. On the evidence, those events were an accident. That the applicant had sustained a visible bruise was unfortunate but scarcely probative of “family violence” within s 64 of the Charter, which requires the wilful or knowing infliction of hurt.

I was also unprepared to find that the respondent had perpetrated family violence on the applicant or the daughters by throwing glassware against the main door of the shared residence. The most contemporaneous police report filed by the applicant records that the respondent had thrown the glassware purely in expression of his frustrations at his losing his employment.⁴ This did not establish any intention or knowledge by the respondent that his acts would have placed his family in fear of hurt. Although the applicant and the daughters had been in the shared residence when the glassware had been thrown, there was no suggestion that they had been in or even around the direction of the throw. I excerpt that police report:

On 13 October 2022 at about 0200hrs, my husband was angry with me as I did not wake him up for his midnight shift, resulting him to loss his job. He then went to the living room to vent his anger by throwing the glass cup onto the main door. On the same day at about 0400hrs, he then throw a glass diffuser on the main door causing the glass to scatter on the living room floor. Afterwhich my husband, went to the master bedroom to ask me to clean up his mess and scold me vulgarities for no apparent reasons. My 2 young children witnessed the incident [elder daughter] and [younger daughter] was in a state of shock and was crying respectively.

In UNQ, the respondent there had thrown a coffee mug in the shared residence. But there was limited evidence on his intentions in doing so and to the locations of the other family members at the material time. Debbie Ong J (as she then was) held that the act had been nothing but an expression of frustration, which, without more, did not establish family violence (see UNQ at [35]):

The Father’s alleged act of throwing the coffee mug on 8 March 2019 – which the Father denied – could amount to wilfully or knowingly placing the Children in fear of hurt if, for example, evidence showed that the children were standing in the direction where the mug was flung. But an expression of frustration by throwing a mug, though inappropriate and ill-advised, would not in itself constitute family violence. The DJ had set out the submissions of each party in respect of the March incident but did not make specific findings such as whether she found that the Father had flung the coffee mug in the direction of the Children. In my judgment, this illustrated the difficulty of reaching a finding on the balance of probabilities of whether family violence had occurred...