Father kills daughter - Mental Illness is real.

“You are a selfless, loving and devoted father.” 

That’s the words of Justice Hoo when she sentenced Tan Tian Chye, 66, (“Mr Tan”) to two years and nine months in jail yesterday for killing his daughter. But taking into account that he had been in remand since 20 Nov 2018, Mr Tan was released yesterday, the same day he was being sentenced. 

This is one case where justice rightly took the road less travelled when the love of a father was pushed to the edge. It is also a case where the tragic crash of mental illness and a caregiver’s devotion ended up in a stranglehold that led to one’s daughter’s death. 

When Mr Tan strangled his daughter to death, he was diagnosed for “suffering from a major depressive episode and significant caregiver stress.” In fact, the judge noted that “Mr Tan and his wife had been on the verge of suicide as their daughter became increasingly unreasonable.”

It reports that Mr Tan and his wife did everything his daughter asked of them. They bit the bullet when she scolded them incessantly, found fault with them and even made them bow before her. Their daughter was mental ill, and was diagnosed with panic attack, when she fainted in the MRT in 2012. 

She was also diagnosed with agoraphobia (“a condition which made her anxious in unfamiliar environment”) and “hypochondriacal preoccupation”.

Here’s a rundown of what the parents have to bear, everyone of them eventually led to the last straw on that fateful day.

After the daughter was diagnosed with panic attack in 2012, she became “anxious about leaving the flat on her own and her boyfriend moved into the flat with her. She also became more particular, and would ask her parents to clean items repeatedly until she was satisfied.”

In 2017, she forced her parents to borrow from their relative so that she could apply for a BTO flat and also ”made her younger brother return $50k her parents had spent on his education.”

When she discovered she was not the sole beneficiary of her mother’s CPF nomination, she “scolded her parents until her mother changed the nomination.”

In mid-2018, she demanded her parents buy industrial fans to blow away secondary smoke coming into their flat. Subsequently, she moved out to her aunt’s place to escape the smoke. 

And according to the DPP, “(she) became more insistent and abusive, and blamed the accused and his wife for not loving her and not providing enough for her.”

Alas, the last straw came on 19 Nov 2018, “after (Mr Tan) picked her up from the aunt’s place, she told him over lunch that she felt like killing him with a fork.”

She then verbally cursed and abused her father throughout the journey. And “upon reaching home, she went to the kitchen, and (Mr Tan) picked up a metal pole to arm himself out of fear that she would harm him.”

“In the kitchen, when he saw her pointing a knife at him, he hit her with the pole and after she fell to the floor, he grabbed a cloth and strangled her with it.”

Mr Tan then called the police and told them that he had killed his daughter.

When Mr Tan heard the sentence yesterday, he thanked the judge, prosecutors and his lawyers and said: “May God bless all of you.”

Lesson? Just one. 

At the sentencing, the judge remarked that this is a sad case that could have been avoided if timely help and appropriate intervention were received by Mr Tan and his family. This is true, because at every critical intersection, the last straw is often the most unexpected one. 

As I am writing this, I have no doubt that many families can identify with Mr Tan in the same way that many could identify with the case of the father-in-law who had stabbed his son-in-law thrice on the chest for his impenitent/arrogant behaviour (which all added up and drove him off the edge) He too suffered from depression). 

Of course, the two cases can be distinguished, but my point is that the last straw is often the unseen, unplanned and unsuspecting intruder into one’s life, and it is described as a “featherweighted straw” because, most times, it doesn’t take a push of great emotional magnitude to cause one to snap, but a light nudge would suffice to change the course of one or two lives forever. 

This case is tragic because, as a father with two young daughters, I could feel his love and devotion for his daughter. Without a doubt, it was a love so compelling that one is prepared to dedicate his whole life or give his life to his daughter without any consideration. 

But to be cornered by circumstances that converged or conspired to overwhelm a father’s love until he had to act in that way speaks of a tragedy that is beyond words, beyond punishment, and beyond imagination. 

The judge said: “It is unfortunate because that much needed help, support and intervention were not sought by or given to the Tan family during those years for their daughter and, thereafter, for the accused.”

Well, let me end by saying that, as a conservative and tradition-bound nation, it is really the last resort for a father (or mother) to want to seek help due to the social stigma involved (amongst other considerations). 

And as a corollary of that is this grim reality that there is always a dark competition between what is the last resort and what is the last straw that breaks the soul and will of a “selfless, loving and devoted father”. 

Tbh, at times, who wins this dark competitive race is determined by who gets to the finishing line first, that is, it is a race between seeking help as the last resort and unwittingly allowing the last circumstantial straw to fall due to a father’s protective, if not, sometimes biased, love.