Family violence in Singapore has never been limited to hitting. The Women’s Charter framework has long covered causing reasonable apprehension of hurt, wrongful confinement and continual harassment causing anguish, none of which require a mark on the skin. The Women’s Charter (Family Violence and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2023 went further and broadened the definition, so that the current regime expressly recognises harm beyond physical injury, including emotional and psychological abuse.
That matters because emotional abuse is what most people living with it struggle to name. There is no incident to point to, nothing a doctor can photograph, and often a persistent sense that you are the unreasonable one. This article sets out what it looks like, how it is recognised, how people evidence it, and what can be done. If you are in immediate danger, call the police on 999.
What the law covers
Family violence under the Women’s Charter applies between family members: spouses and former spouses, parents and children, siblings, parents-in-law, and other relatives within the statutory definition. Where the behaviour comes from someone outside that circle, a different statute applies, which is dealt with further below.
The existing limbs of the definition already reached beyond physical assault. Placing a family member in fear of hurt, wrongfully restraining or confining them against their will, and continual harassment with intent to cause or knowing it is likely to cause anguish all counted, and courts have granted protection orders on that basis for years.
The 2023 amendment Act broadened the framework further, with the stated aim of better addressing harm that is not physical, and of strengthening the surrounding system of protection, investigation and support. Because provisions in an amendment Act of this kind can commence at different times and the operative wording is what governs, the sensible course is to read the current consolidated text of the Women’s Charter on the Singapore Statutes Online site, and MSF’s own guidance, rather than to rely on a summary. What you can take from it is the direction of travel: emotional, psychological and other non-physical abuse is squarely within what the family violence regime is intended to address.
What emotional and psychological abuse looks like
Abuse of this kind is usually a pattern rather than an event. Any single item below might be a bad day in an ordinary relationship. What distinguishes abuse is repetition, escalation, and the effect of steadily shrinking your world.
- Coercive control. Rules about what you wear, who you speak to, when you may leave the house, what time you must be home. Consequences when the rules are broken.
- Isolation. Being cut off from family and friends, whether directly (“you’re not seeing her again”) or by making contact so unpleasant that you stop trying.
- Intimidation. Punching walls, throwing or breaking things, driving dangerously, standing over you, harming pets. Violence directed near you rather than at you is still designed to frighten.
- Threats. To hurt you, themselves, the children or your family; to take the children away; to have you deported; to expose private images or information; to destroy your reputation at work or in your community.
- Humiliation and degradation. Constant criticism, name-calling, mockery in front of children or relatives, being told you are worthless, unstable, or a bad parent.
- Monitoring and surveillance. Reading your messages, tracking your phone, demanding passwords, installing software, checking the car’s mileage, requiring photographic proof of where you are.
- Financial control. Withholding money, controlling all accounts, demanding receipts for ordinary spending, preventing you from working, running up debt in your name.
- Denial and reversal. Insisting incidents did not happen, that you remember them wrongly, that you are the abusive one. This is corrosive precisely because it attacks your ability to trust your own account.
Two things are worth saying plainly. First, this happens to men as well as women, and the protections are not gender-specific. Second, children living in a household where this is happening are affected by it, whether or not anything is ever directed at them.
Why it is harder to evidence, and how people do it
The evidential difficulty is structural. Physical violence leaves injuries, medical records and often a police report. Emotional abuse leaves a pattern that exists mostly in the gap between two people’s accounts, and it is frequently invisible to everyone outside the home because the person doing it is charming in public.
The answer is accumulation. No single item carries the case; a body of consistent material does.
- Contemporaneous notes. A dated record kept as things happen: what was said, what was done, who was present, how you felt. Written at the time, this carries far more weight than a narrative reconstructed a year later. Keep it somewhere the other person cannot access, such as an email to yourself or a locked cloud account under a password they do not have.
- Messages and call logs. Screenshot and back up texts, chat messages, voicemails, emails. Save the abusive ones and also the ones establishing context. Do not delete threads because they are upsetting.
- Third-party witnesses. Family, friends, neighbours, colleagues, domestic helpers: anyone who saw the behaviour, heard it, or saw you immediately afterwards. Evidence of your state at the time is useful even where the person did not witness the incident.
- Medical and counselling records. Visits to a GP for anxiety, sleep problems or stress, and notes from a counsellor or family service centre, create a dated professional record. Telling a doctor the real reason you are there, rather than attributing it to work, is what makes the record useful later.
- Financial records. Statements showing accounts you cannot access, allowances, transfers, or debts incurred in your name evidence financial control concretely.
- Reports already made. Any earlier police report, agency contact or school note becomes part of the timeline.
Recording conversations raises its own legal issues and is not something to do on the assumption it will be admissible. Ask a lawyer before relying on it.
Personal Protection Orders
Where family violence has been committed or is likely to be committed, the Family Justice Courts can make a Personal Protection Order restraining the person from committing family violence against you. Because the definition reaches non-physical harm, emotional and psychological abuse can support such an application.
The court still has to be satisfied on the evidence, which is why the record described above matters. Applications are made at the Family Justice Courts, and the process, who can apply and what the order does are set out in the guide to applying for a Personal Protection Order. Where the person you need protection from lives with you, the court can also make a Domestic Exclusion Order excluding them from the home or part of it, and can make a counselling order.
The broader picture (what counts as family violence, the agencies involved, and how protection sits alongside other proceedings) is covered in the overview of family violence in Singapore.
Emotional abuse in a divorce
The same conduct is relevant to the divorce itself. Unreasonable behaviour is one of the facts used to establish that the marriage has broken down irretrievably, and it asks whether the respondent has behaved in such a way that you cannot reasonably be expected to continue living with them. Sustained emotional and psychological abuse fits that question directly, and it does not require any physical incident.
Practically, the statement of particulars needs specifics (dated examples, what was said or done, the effect on you) rather than general characterisation. The guide to unreasonable behaviour as a fact for divorce explains how particulars are drafted and what threshold applies.
The abuse may also be relevant to arrangements for the children, since the welfare of the child governs those decisions and a pattern of controlling or intimidating behaviour in the household is part of that picture. How protection orders and divorce proceedings interact, including timing and whether to run them together, is covered in the guide to family violence and divorce proceedings.
When the person is not family: the POHA route
The Women’s Charter family violence provisions apply to family members. If the person harassing you falls outside that definition, such as a former partner you were never married to, an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend, a colleague, a neighbour, or someone contacting you online, the Protection from Harassment Act is the relevant statute.
POHA covers harassment, alarm and distress, unlawful stalking, threats and doxxing, and provides for protection orders through the Protection from Harassment Court. The remedies and the application process are set out in the guide to POHA protection orders. Some situations touch both regimes, and it is worth getting advice on which route fits rather than assuming.
Where to get help
You do not have to decide on a legal step in order to get support, and most people talk to someone well before they take any formal action.
- Police, 999 in an emergency, or at any neighbourhood police centre for a report.
- National Anti-Violence and Sexual Harassment Helpline, 1800 777 0000, operating around the clock for advice, support and referral.
- Family service centres and family violence specialist centres, which provide casework, counselling, safety planning and help with protection order applications. MSF maintains the directory of services.
- Family Justice Courts, for making a protection order application.
- Your GP or a counsellor, both for your own health and to create a dated professional record.
Support with the practical and emotional side of separation, including counselling and programmes for parents and children, is set out in the guide to divorce support services in Singapore.
Trusting your own account
The most common thing people say about emotional abuse is that they were not sure it counted. There was no assault, the other person had a version in which everything was your fault, and after long enough you stopped being able to tell.
The test is not whether an incident would look serious written on a single line. It is whether the pattern, over time, has made you afraid, isolated, controlled, or unable to live your own life. That is what the law is now more clearly designed to reach, and it is a legitimate basis on which to seek help.
