SINGAPORE: The fatal abuse of four-year-old Megan Khung exposes a painful truth about how we can fail the most vulnerable among us.
Too often, protection becomes procedural. We risk reducing children’s lives to fragments of case notes and forms, escalated somewhere but going nowhere.
Megan died in February 2020 after months of beatings, starvation and acts of emotional abuse by her mother and the woman’s then boyfriend. Her ordeal was all the more tragic, for how she fell through the cracks and the multiple lapses by agencies which were laid out in an independent review panel’s report on Thursday (Oct 23).
For those of us working in child protection, the report findings brought both relief and grief. Relief, because the initial government statement had left us with more questions than answers.
Grief hits differently. When a death of this nature occurs, it sends ripples of guilt, fear and self-reproach through all of us who share the same responsibility and calling. Have we done enough, and are we able to continue doing this work with conviction?
