Disappeared on purpose

Disappeared on purpose

MADAM Tan Lye Han's three-room flat in Serangoon North is spartan. There is no sofa. A plastic table, cabinet and TV rack are the only pieces of furniture in the living room.
But the 51-year-old says sadly that even this barest of homes, one she shares with her 15-year-old son, Kevin, may soon have to go.

In a mix of Mandarin, English and Cantonese, the frail-looking woman says: 'I need to sell this place. I have no more money.'

As a part-time cleaner at a condominium, she earns $400 a month. About $200 is used to pay off her housing loan, which is already heavily subsidised by the HDB's financial assistance schemes.

The rest of the money goes to the care of Kevin, who has thalassemia, a blood disorder that renders him weak and sickly. He also has to attend a special school as he is mentally slow.

Mother and son are so poor that they do not have a telephone line. And savings? 'Zero,' she says.

Life has been hard for her since Mr Ong Gim Seng, the man she calls her husband, went missing some time after November 2004.

And hearing her story, it seems that he may simply not want to be found.

Aged 50 this year, he owes Madam Tan maintenance money - $300 a month - for their son. He has not paid up for the past three years.

The couple had a customary wedding in 1991 after Madam Tan discovered that she was pregnant with Kevin. They never registered their marriage.

She says she had been dating Mr Ong for about three years after meeting him at a party. It was only when she became pregnant that he admitted that he was already married but estranged from his wife.

As he had never signed divorce papers, it was impossible for them to be legally wed. 'I didn't mind. As long as he treated me and my son well, that was enough,' she says.

Mr Ong, then working as a construction worker, took his bride, who was unemployed, to live with him in a tent in one of the construction sites he was working at. They lived on a diet of instant noodles and canned food.

Then, Mr Ong, whom she says won her over because he was a responsible man, 'started to change'. He began frequenting nightclubs and drank his evenings away.

Their living situation improved slightly when Madam Tan was about nine months pregnant. After she suffered a bad fall on the construction site, Mr Ong's boss offered to put the couple up temporarily in a vacant flat he owned in Toa Payoh.

But a few months after Kevin was born on Jan 8, 1992, Mr Ong stopped coming home and moved into a rented flat in North Bridge Road.

This was after Madam Tan's mother had died of cancer. 'He was scared of my mother. So after she died, he left. In the eyes of the law, we were not husband and wife. So he had no qualms about ill-treating me.'


Made to pay maintenance

WITH no family to turn to - her father had died earlier and she was estranged from her sister - and Mr Ong's boss wanting the Toa Payoh flat back, mother and son hopped from one welfare home to another for the next 10 years.

To make ends meet, she worked as a factory worker to put her son through kindergarten and primary school.

When Kevin was about seven, she approached the Family & Juvenile Court to seek maintenance money from Mr Ong. He agreed to pay her $150 a month. In 2001, she got a flat of her own with help from counsellors from the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports.

Then in 2004, the Court ruled that Mr Tan had to increase his contribution to $300. The last time she saw him was on Nov 1, 2004, at the Family Court in Havelock Square.

'He was very angry,' she remembers. 'When he was told he had to pay $300, he asked the judge: 'You want my life, is it?''

Three months later, the money stopped being sent to her bank account. With mounting debts, she went to his home to look him up but was told by his neighbours that he 'may have gone to Malaysia'.

Despite being summoned by the Court several times, he also failed to show.

On Sept 7, 2005, she filed a missing person's report on him. In February last year, the police told her that they had made extensive efforts to trace Mr Ong, but to no avail.

She also sought the Crime Library's help earlier this year. It printed posters of him and put them up at MRT stations, and put the word out on him through the Internet.

Madam Tan believes that he is still in Singapore as he had 'no money to think about starting life anew in another country'.

But there is also the possibility that he may have been killed in a drunken brawl, she says.

'How can he be missing just because of the maintenance money? How can he want to disappear for so many years? That's stupid.'

Her anger against him turns to despair when she thinks of Kevin. Crying, she says: 'I only want him to come and see my son. He has to give him an answer.

'Even if you hate me for some reason, your son is innocent. He did not ask to be born. Everyone has a father except him.'

Asked if she thinks Mr Ong left her for another woman or his first wife, she shakes her head vigorously and can only manage a small 'I don't think so'.

Adds the Catholic: 'I didn't wish for all this to happen. Who doesn't want a happy marriage? But it is God's will.'