Father of XQD and XQE v Child Protector

Facts

The appellant is the father of two children, XQD and XQE. He married the children's mother in 2007, and the family lived in China until 2020, when they moved to Singapore. The father and the children are now Singapore citizens; the mother remains a citizen of China. The parents quarrelled often and some fights turned violent. By December 2024 the father had been charged with four offences, among them charges of causing hurt to the mother by repeated slaps and of threatening to kill her. In March 2025 the mother left the home for a crisis shelter, later renting accommodation from a landlord whom the Child Protector assessed to be a safe adult.

On 2 May 2025 the Youth Court made interim orders for the children to live with the mother and directed the father not to go to her residence without the Approved Welfare Officer's approval. Without that approval, the father later turned up on several occasions near the apartment, outside the younger child's school and at the mother's workplace. The Child Protector applied for Care and Protection Orders (CPOs) placing the children in the mother's care under supervision for 12 months. The District Judge granted the CPOs and most of the incidental orders, including counselling for both parents. The father appealed in Youth Court Appeal No 3 of 2025/01 to the General Division of the High Court (Family Division).

Issues

1. Whether the District Judge erred in law or reached a decision against the weight of the evidence in granting the CPOs.
2. Whether the children were in need of care or protection because of emotional or psychological abuse under s 5(1)(g) of the Children and Young Persons Act 1993.
3. Whether the protective service reports relied on below were one-sided and unreliable, as the father claimed.

Holding

The High Court dismissed the father's appeal, leaving the Care and Protection Orders and the incidental orders made by the Youth Court in place.

Reasoning

Because the appeal concerned care and protection orders under s 54 of the Act, s 394 of the Criminal Procedure Code 2010 applied: the order could be reversed only if it was wrong in law or against the weight of the evidence. The court found neither.

The court agreed that the children needed care or protection under s 5(1)(g) because the father had subjected them to emotional or psychological abuse. Under s 5(2)(f), exposing a child to violence against a related person can amount to such abuse. The reports showed that the children often saw the conflicts, were sometimes drawn into them, and had to step in when quarrels became violent; the elder son was injured in one altercation, and the children were described as scared.

The father said the reports were one-sided accounts from the mother that left out his side, exaggerated matters and conflicted with police records. The court was not persuaded. The documents did not support his case and in many places contradicted it. Those who prepared the reports had interviewed the children, and the hospital records and school reports came from neutral third parties whom the court found impartial and credible. The father's submissions also showed deep animosity towards the mother, so reconciliation looked unlikely, and reversing the CPOs would probably leave the children exposed to further physical and verbal abuse.

From the judgment