Law, Lies, and Videotape

I was work­ing for Samuel Seow Law Cor­por­a­tion when its founder and man­aging dir­ect­or assaul­ted female staff mem­bers in his office last year. When videos of the incid­ent sur­faced a few days ago, my phone was on fire. A few sen­sa­tion­al­ists were fish­ing for gos­sip (wrong num­ber, guys), but the major­ity had an actu­al desire to talk. For the first time, I couldn’t answer every­one who con­tac­ted me in time. That’s why I wrote this post.

Work­ing at Samuel Seow Law Cor­por­a­tion has made for a tumul­tu­ous year of pub­lic drama, work­place abuse and prom­ises of reform. If this were a screen­play, it would be rejec­ted as too hyphy. But life writes the most hys­ter­ic­al stories.

The abuse of Samuel Seow, the founder and man­aging dir­ect­or, was first repor­ted just over a year ago, albeit without video foot­age at the time. The many on social media had a field day. The abuse vic­tims less so, but after a while the media atten­tion died down. But it has flared up again now that we can see what happened back then.

The Workplace

I star­ted work­ing for Samuel Seow Law Cor­por­a­tion as a con­sult­ant in early 2017. To say I loved it would be an exag­ger­a­tion, but the con­sultancy con­stel­la­tion was a good deal for me, and the col­leagues were nice. Some of them have become friends. The staff (not me) called Samuel boss. It was a 老板 thing that did­n’t res­on­ate with me, but it wasn’t a prob­lem. Indeed Samuel and I got on well. On a good day he could be a hoot.

But as it turned out, his tem­per often made it unpleas­ant to be in his pres­ence. Tan­trums were com­mon and some days were worse than oth­ers. How­ever, there were people he would not shout at, such as his seni­or sec­ret­ary, the COO, or myself. We made sev­er­al attempts to talk some sense into him, but to no avail.

When I saw no change for the bet­ter in the medi­um term, I decided to put dis­tance between me and Samuel and work from home. For­tu­nately, my inde­pend­ent pos­i­tion allowed me to do this, except when I had to meet a cli­ent or col­lect my monthly cheque. Most of my less priv­ileged col­leagues left when their per­son­al tol­er­ance reserves were exhausted. There were suc­cessors who also came, saw and left. And so on. In fact, at Samuel Seow Law Cor­por­a­tion, per­son­al assist­ants, account­ants and law­yers were trans­it­ory items.

The Abuse

I wasn’t in the office on that fate­ful day in April 2018, when Samuel not only threw a tan­trum, but became phys­ic­ally abus­ive towards female col­leagues. One of them filed a police report and com­plained to the Law Soci­ety. An audio tape of the incid­ent was leaked to the pub­lic and a ver­it­able shit­storm des­cen­ded on Samuel. If you were in Singa­pore at the time, there’s no way you didn’t at least hear about it, if not more. I chose not to listen to the tape at the time. Instead I listened to my col­leagues who were there.

I also listened to Samuel when I con­fron­ted him about the incident.

Why I Stayed

Samuel was dev­ast­ated and shell-shocked by the media frenzy, social media to be pre­cise. He seemed wrecked by the exper­i­ence and remorse­ful. More import­antly for me, he seemed to under­stand that he had to make a drastic change, the hard­est change for most of us to make: a real, last­ing change in behaviour.

I’m not say­ing that Samuel is a nar­ciss­ist or any­thing like that. It’s not for me to dia­gnose any­one. All I saw last year was a man who had hurt people around him. Now he seemed to want to make amends. When I saw that repent­ance, I decided to stay and help if I could.

It also appeared that Samuel had suc­ceeded, albeit in his own name. The police report and the Law Soci­ety com­plaint were with­drawn, and some of those involved issued a joint press release. Res­tor­a­tion of peace, if you like.

I’m not naïve enough to think that there were no bene­fits. I also saw that Samuel was act­ively work­ing to repair his repu­ta­tion, for example by get­ting friendly cov­er­age in 8 Days magazine. But all in all, I hoped that Samuel was on the right track.

Now I know that was a mistake.

Why I Left

Full dis­clos­ure: I have more than one reas­on for sever­ing my ties with Samuel.

To begin with, it did­n’t help that Samuel Seow Law Cor­por­a­tion, under Samuel’s man­age­ment, botched the renew­al of my for­eign prac­ti­tion­er regis­tra­tion. This regis­tra­tion is my equi­val­ent of a loc­al law­yer­’s prac­tising cer­ti­fic­ate. I need it because I prac­tise law for a liv­ing. It has to be renewed every year, but unfor­tu­nately I can­’t apply for it myself. A for­eign law­yer must apply for the renew­al of his regis­tra­tion togeth­er with the law firm for which he works.

Nor did it help that Samuel had stopped pay­ing my salary. By the end of April this year, he had­n’t paid my salary for March and a sub­stan­tial part of my salary for Feb­ru­ary. Live­li­hood, as I said, so on a Fri­day after­noon I filed a small law­suit against Samuel Seow Law Cor­por­a­tion. Coin­cid­ent­ally, it was the day after the video leak. By the fol­low­ing Monday, the cheques were ready. After they cleared, I with­drew my law­suit. I got my money, but I was not happy that it had come to this.

But yes, the last straw was the videos.

The Video Footage

Again, if you’re in Singa­pore these days, there’s no way you haven’t heard about or even seen the two office CCTV videos show­ing Samuel in full attack mode. Like the audio tape a year ago, they were released by an unknown per­son. The first and short­er video, run­ning for about a minute, shows Samuel slap­ping a female col­league in the face and shov­ing and verbally abus­ing her. The second, longer video, run­ning for over six minutes, shows Samuel chas­ing, push­ing and punch­ing anoth­er col­league. In this video, he also pushes a third col­league so hard that she falls to the floor.

I have watched these videos. The short­er one has no sound, but the longer one is exactly the same as last year’s tape. Now I’ve listened to the rel­ev­ant parts. All that shouting.

The videos are not for the faint of heart, espe­cially if you know the people in them. They clearly show crimin­al­ity and breaches of the rules of pro­fes­sion­al con­duct for law­yers. They also show intol­er­able cow­ardice and miso­gyny. A burly man bul­lies three petite women – but does­n’t do any­thing about the male col­league who keeps grabbing him and try­ing to pull him aside until he pushes him again.

The Admission of Fault in Small Slices

To be hon­est, I hadn’t ima­gined Samuel’s assaults to be so vehe­ment. I had ima­gined him sit­ting or stand­ing behind his desk most of the time. But des­pite the dis­turb­ing foot­age, I told myself not to get car­ried away. As ugly as the videos are, they show some­thing over which the parties involved are no longer in dis­pute. The incid­ent happened a year ago, and Samuel and the ladies are said to have settled the mat­ter. No dis­cip­lin­ary action for pro­fes­sion­al mis­con­duct has yet been taken [update 1, update 2]. Nor has the police invest­ig­a­tion led to Samuel being brought before the courts [update 1, update 2].

That’s when I real­ised that Samuel was lying.

A year ago he admit­ted only part of what happened in the second video. What’s there to deny any­way – the tape was out there and it spoke volumes. But he denied push­ing the col­league to the floor when she told him off, a moment that was­n’t on the tape. He also denied assault­ing the oth­er col­league, which was­n’t on the tape either. There was no evid­ence of these assaults at the time. Such evid­ence has only now emerged.

In short, Samuel only admit­ted what could­n’t be denied. The rest he denied.

That was it for me. I could no longer believe in the sin­cer­ity of his desire to change, if there ever was one. The first step would have been to admit the wrong he had done. Everything, without exception.

All the activ­it­ies of the past year, aimed at restor­ing Samuel’s repu­ta­tion, now seem to shine in a dif­fer­ent light, in the light of selfish­ness. In ret­ro­spect, it’s so clear.

The media atten­tion has died down, at least the big wave. My phone has cooled down a bit.

I work else­where now.

To a Quick Recovery and Return to Good Health

I’ve come to know Samuel as an emo­tion­ally dis­turbed man. I hope he’ll get the help he needs to get better.

Above all, I hope that vic­tims of work­place abuse every­where will find peace, tran­quil­lity and hap­pi­ness. May they have the strength and patience to over­come. Time is a bitch, but it is a heal­er.