SINGAPORE - For over a year, a young girl on Twitter called on others to rape Ms Nicole Seah, even revealing the location of her workplace.
In an exclusive interview with MyPaper following a much-talked-about Facebook post in which she bared her soul, the 27-year-old opposition-party member said: "At first, I was really freaked out. But a lot of things are said on the Internet, so I stopped being so bothered."
Ms Seah, who is on three months' leave of absence from the National Solidarity Party for health reasons, also had to deal with a female stalker.
For two weeks late last year, she would return home to find barely coherent handwritten letters on scraps of paper left on her Housing Board flat's doorstep.
One day, the stalker left a photocopy of her own identity card, which Ms Seah used to report the woman to the police. The stalker stopped harassing her soon after.
These were just some of the threats Ms Seah alluded to on Saturday in her Facebook post, which has attracted more than 4,000 likes and was shared more than 1,000 times.
In it, she described her struggles in the two years after the 2011 General Election, which she contested.
They included relationship woes, job troubles, her grandmother's cancer diagnosis and the exhaustion of balancing a day job with house visits and walkabouts.She also admitted to the "terrible, irreversible mistake" of lobbying for presidential hopeful Tan Jee Say in 2011.
She did not want to comment when asked whether she felt she had swayed votes away from Dr Tan Cheng Bock, who lost to the current president, Dr Tony Tan Keng Yam, by a razor-thin margin.
"I didn't realise the kind of influence I could have on people. They were coming up to me to say they supported him because of me," she told MyPaper.
Health-wise, Ms Seah has some way to go. Her hands shook as she ate her lunch yesterday, which she said was a sign that she has not recovered completely.
Ms Seah did not want to disclose the nature of her illness. But she said she has to be on medication for at least one more year.
But she has something to look forward to: a new job. Ms Seah, who is working temporarily at an advertising agency, has accepted a job with another firm.
She conceded that she took a huge risk writing the post by "putting (her) reputation on the line". But she is glad that the response has been "overwhelmingly positive", with many Facebook users leaving her encouraging comments.
"People felt they are not alone in their struggles," she said.
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