NUS East Asian Institute employee says she faced bullying, retaliation for reporting sexual assault

[UPDATE: Sept 7]

Professor Zheng Yongnian "categorically denies" all the allegations made against him, a Singapore law firm said in a statement released on his behalf on Sept 4.

The warning he received from the police did not "amount to a pronouncement of guilt or finding of fact", the statement said.

It added that Prof Zheng's resignation from EAI was unrelated to the sexual harassment allegations.

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She thought she was "fulfilling obligations" by reporting her sexual assault to her employer, but an East Asian Institute (EAI) employee claimed it has only led to bullying and attempts at covering up the incident.

EAI, a think tank under the National University of Singapore (NUS), is looking into the employee's allegation that she faced retaliation for reporting its former director for sexual assault, it said in a statement to the media yesterday (Sept 2).

Prof Zheng Yongnian, the person accused of sexual assault, has also resigned from EAI and NUS, and is on leave until his contract expires later this month, EAI added.

The sexual assault and bullying accusations first came to light when a Twitter user, who identified herself as Charlotte, posted a string of tweets in August relating her predicament.

[embed]https://twitter.com/Chary19513/status/1291765279668580353[/embed]

According to Charlotte, she was sexually assaulted by Prof Zheng in May 2018, shortly after she started working at EAI.

She made a police report a year later, and Prof Zheng was issued a warning in May this year for outrage of modesty, she said.

However, her ordeal did not end there.

"I fulfilled my obligation to inform [the] university about my police report, though I don't have to. However, [the university] officer kept asking me to repeat the scene of harassment and questioning my intention with preconception," she wrote.

She was also asked to explain rumours that Prof Zheng had allegedly fabricated about her, she said, calling it a "serious humiliation".

Additionally the EAI management discussed her sexual assault case with "many externally irrelevant people", she added.

Her case is not an isolated one, Charlotte said, alleging that Prof Zheng's behaviour had been going on for a decade but EAI "pretended not to know".

Other victims who stepped forward were also bullied or expelled from the institution in retaliation, she claimed.

Charlotte also wrote that when she spoke to female colleagues who had purportedly been harassed by Prof Zheng as well, she was "admonished" by EAI.

She concluded: "Until now there remain covering up and bullying within EAI. Every day I feel trapped in black hole with deep exhaustion, frightening and desperation [sic]."

In its statement, EAI said it was aware of the social media postings and "wide-ranging allegations" against the institute and its current and former staff members.

"We understand that a police investigation related to some of the allegations has been completed and the university is following up with its internal investigations into some of the matters mentioned in the post," it added.

Prof Zheng, a prominent political scientist and political commentator, was director of EAI for 11 years before stepping down from the position in May last year.

Prof Zheng, who continued to work in the organisation as a research professor, relinquished the directorship in order to focus on his research projects, he told The Straits Times the following month.

kimberlylim@asiaone.com