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Cry havoc, and let slip Chia Boon Teck
www.thepeakmagazine.com.sg
Opinion
By Zat Astha / 25 Mar 2025
Chia Boon Teck cuts a striking figure in Singapore’s legal circles. As co-managing director of boutique firm Chia Wong Chambers, he built a reputation for aggressive and effective litigation — the kind of lawyer who isn’t afraid to take the bull by the horns. Outside the courtroom, the 53-year-old lawyer indulges in life’s luxuries: He founded and presides over The Exoticars Club, a supercar enthusiasts’ group known for its exclusive high-octane escapades.
In one profile, Chia — who drives (or perhaps used to drive) a Lamborghini Murcielago — boasted of leading club members on a 3,500m-high alpine test drive of Audi R8s and organising extravagant jaunts from Munich to Pangkor Laut. By his own telling, he’s come a long way: “I morphed from a Commando to a CID investigator to a Singapore Airlines cabin crew before settling down as a lawyer,” his LinkedIn bio once read.
Indeed, Chia’s public image blends glamour with gravitas — ex-commando toughness, jet-set lifestyle, and the seniority of a lawyer entrusted with leadership in the profession.
In August 2023, he was elected vice-president of the Law Society of Singapore, capping his rise in professional standing. On paper, Chia epitomised the successful, sophisticated lawyer-cum-gentleman, juggling court cases by day and champagne-fuelled supercar events by night. But recent events have prompted a more jarring question: Does this polished image mask a pattern of troubling attitudes and contradictions?
Chia’s carefully burnished reputation came crashing down in March 2025, thanks to one LinkedIn post that lawyers and the public alike found jaw-droppingly offensive. In that post — ostensibly a commentary on the conviction of a former YouTube actor for raping a woman he met on Tinder — the Law Society VP’s tone was sardonic and unsettling. He peppered his post with ten rhetorical “questions” that read more like a manual in victim-blaming.
He began by warning that “people who indulge in one night stands may wanna take note to protect themselves from attack, or accusations of attack,” immediately shifting attention onto the behaviour of potential victims rather than perpetrators.
He then questioned the woman’s actions and credibility with a series of snide asides. Noting that the pair “met on the dating app Tinder,” Chia sneered: “What’s Tinder well known for? It ain’t no LinkedIn.” In other words, adults who meet on a hookup app should expect what’s coming.
When the media report listed the four charges (two counts of rape, one sexual assault by penetration, one outrage of modesty), Chia flippantly remarked: “Wow. Was she awake throughout the marathon?” — a shockingly glib comment implying that the victim might have been a willing participant given the prolonged nature of the assault.
He highlighted the woman’s age (30) and career as an actress-model, musing that she was “not exactly a babe in the woods.” In Chia’s telling, this successful adult woman should have known better or been less naive. He even mocked her stated reason for meeting the man (to get scriptwriting advice) by snarking, “At that late hour on the bed of a Russian man she just met on Tinder?”
Each point he raised dripped with scepticism toward the victim’s account: He cast doubt on her saying “no,” questioned why she gave the man her address to book her a ride home (suggesting it “sounds rather like a date”), and derided her explanation that she feared reporting the rape due to low conviction rates (scoffing “Seriously? What articles?”).
Related: Et tu, Sherman?
Dozens of other lawyers, male and female, echoed her outrage, many noting that Chia’s insinuations ran against what the courts have actually said is appropriate in handling sexual assault cases.
The Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) weighed in, saying that when a senior lawyer mocks a rape victim, it’s not just offensive — it’s dangerous in its potential chilling effect on survivors coming forward. Perhaps most striking was the rebuke from Singapore’s Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam.
He said he was “surprised” by Chia’s remarks and emphatically underscored that “shaming and blaming victims steps over the line. And misogyny should have no place in our society”. Shanmugam expressed concern that Chia’s words, coming from a Law Society leader, might mislead people into thinking such views reflected Singapore’s norms — potentially deterring other victims from reporting crimes.
Under mounting pressure, Chia removed the LinkedIn post and deactivated his account. He issued a defensive quasi-apology, claiming that his intent was “not to cast blame on any party” but “to highlight the importance of situational awareness” and how people can “protect themselves in social situations”.
This attempt to recast his tirade as a public service announcement fooled very few. The Law Society’s president, Lisa Sam, publicly repudiated her vice-president’s views as “unacceptable,” noting pointedly that “the victim’s morality should not have been questioned in this manner.” In an extraordinary move, the Council of the Law Society requested Chia’s resignation.
Less than three days after his post, Chia Boon Teck stepped down as vice-president and council member of the Law Society, effective immediately. The Law Society thanked him for his past service with conspicuous brevity, then erased his profile from its website.
It was a dramatic fall from grace for a man who, until that moment, represented the Singapore legal profession in a leadership capacity.
Take Chia’s views on sexual assault and women. The March 2025 post wasn’t even the first time he appeared to mock or doubt a woman alleging sexual misconduct. In an earlier case, Chia defended a man accused of molesting a job applicant during an interview. How did he argue his client’s innocence? By digging into the accuser’s personal blog and using her own writings against her. On her blog, the woman had described herself as a “feisty” person — even recounting how she fought off a pimp once.
Chia pounced on this, contending that such a bold woman would surely have raised an alarm if the alleged molestation had really occurred. “It is all too easy for a woman to act demure in court,” Chia allegedly said in an interview with Straits Times in 2011 (that can no longer be found online though text downloads still exist), openly suggesting that female accusers can just fake being meek victims on the stand. Her feistiness, in his view, undermined her claims of being passively harassed. (Never mind that trauma affects victims in unpredictable ways — Chia implied a “truly strong” woman would have made a scene, and since she didn’t, her story was suspect.)
In the end, his client was convicted anyway (of a reduced charge) and fined, but Chia’s tactic spoke volumes. It revealed a mindset quick to cast aspersions on women’s credibility, painting them as liars or blameworthy for not fighting back. Years later, his LinkedIn diatribe followed the exact same playbook: the victim must have been asking for it, or lying, or both.
Little wonder that lawyers like Yuen Thio invoked the word “misogynistic” to describe Chia’s attitude, and that AWARE flagged it as a dangerous myth-making that shifts blame from perpetrator to victim.
Chia’s moral posturing doesn’t stop at gender issues. He often dons the mantle of the outraged citizen defending decency and authority — but only when it suits his agenda. This is the same lawyer, after all, who took it upon himself to trigger the arrest of a 17-year-old YouTuber for an irreverent video. In 2015, as Singapore was mourning founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, teenager Amos Yee posted a crude video criticising the late leader and comparing him to Jesus — sparking widespread controversy. While many found the video obnoxious, Chia Boon Teck found it criminal. He promptly lodged a police report against the teen and rallied 11 others to co-sign it.
But Chia didn’t stop at alerting the authorities; he also allegedly penned a letter to The Straits Times Forum page to justify his actions. In that letter, Chia thundered that “disrespectful comments” about Lee Kuan Yew “must not be tolerated”, and that those who make such comments “must be taken to task” by the authorities or by their employers or professional bodies.
“There is a limit to freedom of expression,” he lectured, hammering home that in Singapore, one’s free speech ends where Chia’s sense of order begins. He then quite literally practised what he preached: by reporting Amos Yee, he helped ensure the teen was charged and eventually jailed.
At the time, Chia framed this as a principled stand for “responsible speech”. He even told reporters that Amos’s video was “not a mindless rant” but a calculated, unlawful offense — implying that swift punishment was not just warranted but necessary.
Fast forward a decade, and observe the rich irony: Chia, who once zealously argued that freedom of speech should be curbed to protect society’s moral sanctities, was now invoking his own freedom to post snide commentary that many say crossed the line of basic decency.
The champion of “limits” on expression found himself on the receiving end of public outrage demanding limits on his expression. The parallel did not go unnoticed. In both cases — Amos Yee’s and the rape victim’s — Chia positioned himself as a sort of moral arbiter. But the contrast in what outraged him is telling: He was deeply offended by a teenager’s crude mockery of a powerful man, yet oddly comfortable trivialising a young woman’s account of being raped.
Free speech for the vulnerable 17-year-old? Not if it insulted authority. Free speech for the 50-something lawyer to question a rape survivor’s virtue? In Chia’s world, apparently yes, until society emphatically said no.
As a leader of the bar, he was expected to uphold the profession’s dignity and the public’s trust. Yet the same man showed a propensity to use his platform to punch down — whether against a teenage blogger or a rape victim — and to flex his legal muscles in service of his personal moral reactions.
Chia’s case also underscores the privileges and blind spots that can come with power. Enjoying a successful career and social prestige, he seemed startlingly out of touch with social expectations of empathy, equality, and professionalism. He surrounded himself with luxury and like-minded elites (picture the supercar club’s exclusive gatherings), yet failed to grasp the basic duty of empathy that his leadership role demanded when commenting on a rape case.
It is striking that it took a massive public backlash and intervention by his peers (and superiors) to drive home what should have been obvious: that blaming a rape survivor in 2025 is not just “unacceptable” but utterly contrary to the values of the legal profession and modern society. The Law Society president’s statement said it plainly: Such views are “inimical for a person in a position of leadership to espouse.” In other words, Chia should have known better — or at least kept his retrograde opinions to himself.
So, who really is Chia Boon Teck? The answer, it appears, is a man who embodies a curious mix of bravado and obliviousness. He is someone who eagerly wraps himself in the trappings of authority — citing law and order, representing the establishment, enjoying high society acclaim — but who has repeatedly shown poor judgment in wielding that authority.
He has cast himself as a defender of virtue (be it protecting the honour of a national leader or warning of the “real-world risks” of casual sex), yet he has unapologetically trampled on the very virtues of compassion, fairness, and professionalism that the public rightly expects of senior lawyers. His pattern of commentary suggests a lawyer who uses the law not as a tool for justice, but as a cudgel to enforce his personal moral code or biases — against the weak, the young, or the voiceless.
In the end, Chia Boon Teck’s story is a cautionary tale for the legal profession. It reveals how hubris and hypocrisy can fester even in its top ranks. A man who drove Lamborghinis through the Alps and led a fraternity of the wealthy could not find the humility to empathise with a victim of sexual violence. A lawyer who once implored society to curb freedom of expression had to be shamed into understanding why his own expression deserved censure.
Chia’s rise and fall compel us to ask whether he ever truly understood the responsibility that comes with legal power — or whether he was too busy enjoying its perks. The next time a public figure postures as a guardian of morality while denigrating others, we would do well to remember Chia Boon Teck. His words provided the world a window into his character, and what we saw was not glamour and gravitas, but self-righteousness and scorn — the antithesis of the integrity a leader of law should uphold.
www.thepeakmagazine.com.sg
By Zat Astha / 25 Mar 2025
Chia Boon Teck cuts a striking figure in Singapore’s legal circles. As co-managing director of boutique firm Chia Wong Chambers, he built a reputation for aggressive and effective litigation — the kind of lawyer who isn’t afraid to take the bull by the horns. Outside the courtroom, the 53-year-old lawyer indulges in life’s luxuries: He founded and presides over The Exoticars Club, a supercar enthusiasts’ group known for its exclusive high-octane escapades.
In one profile, Chia — who drives (or perhaps used to drive) a Lamborghini Murcielago — boasted of leading club members on a 3,500m-high alpine test drive of Audi R8s and organising extravagant jaunts from Munich to Pangkor Laut. By his own telling, he’s come a long way: “I morphed from a Commando to a CID investigator to a Singapore Airlines cabin crew before settling down as a lawyer,” his LinkedIn bio once read.
Indeed, Chia’s public image blends glamour with gravitas — ex-commando toughness, jet-set lifestyle, and the seniority of a lawyer entrusted with leadership in the profession.
In August 2023, he was elected vice-president of the Law Society of Singapore, capping his rise in professional standing. On paper, Chia epitomised the successful, sophisticated lawyer-cum-gentleman, juggling court cases by day and champagne-fuelled supercar events by night. But recent events have prompted a more jarring question: Does this polished image mask a pattern of troubling attitudes and contradictions?
Chia’s carefully burnished reputation came crashing down in March 2025, thanks to one LinkedIn post that lawyers and the public alike found jaw-droppingly offensive. In that post — ostensibly a commentary on the conviction of a former YouTube actor for raping a woman he met on Tinder — the Law Society VP’s tone was sardonic and unsettling. He peppered his post with ten rhetorical “questions” that read more like a manual in victim-blaming.
He then questioned the woman’s actions and credibility with a series of snide asides. Noting that the pair “met on the dating app Tinder,” Chia sneered: “What’s Tinder well known for? It ain’t no LinkedIn.” In other words, adults who meet on a hookup app should expect what’s coming.
When the media report listed the four charges (two counts of rape, one sexual assault by penetration, one outrage of modesty), Chia flippantly remarked: “Wow. Was she awake throughout the marathon?” — a shockingly glib comment implying that the victim might have been a willing participant given the prolonged nature of the assault.
He highlighted the woman’s age (30) and career as an actress-model, musing that she was “not exactly a babe in the woods.” In Chia’s telling, this successful adult woman should have known better or been less naive. He even mocked her stated reason for meeting the man (to get scriptwriting advice) by snarking, “At that late hour on the bed of a Russian man she just met on Tinder?”
Each point he raised dripped with scepticism toward the victim’s account: He cast doubt on her saying “no,” questioned why she gave the man her address to book her a ride home (suggesting it “sounds rather like a date”), and derided her explanation that she feared reporting the rape due to low conviction rates (scoffing “Seriously? What articles?”).
An equal reaction
The response was swift and furious. Fellow lawyers, women’s advocacy groups, and even government leaders condemned Chia’s post as beyond the pale. Prominent lawyer Stefanie Yuen Thio publicly blasted his comments as “victim-shaming” and “appalling … from an individual who holds the office of a leader of the Bar.” She called on him to explain himself to the profession and warned that “absent an acceptable explanation, he should step down.”Dozens of other lawyers, male and female, echoed her outrage, many noting that Chia’s insinuations ran against what the courts have actually said is appropriate in handling sexual assault cases.
The Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) weighed in, saying that when a senior lawyer mocks a rape victim, it’s not just offensive — it’s dangerous in its potential chilling effect on survivors coming forward. Perhaps most striking was the rebuke from Singapore’s Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam.
He said he was “surprised” by Chia’s remarks and emphatically underscored that “shaming and blaming victims steps over the line. And misogyny should have no place in our society”. Shanmugam expressed concern that Chia’s words, coming from a Law Society leader, might mislead people into thinking such views reflected Singapore’s norms — potentially deterring other victims from reporting crimes.
Under mounting pressure, Chia removed the LinkedIn post and deactivated his account. He issued a defensive quasi-apology, claiming that his intent was “not to cast blame on any party” but “to highlight the importance of situational awareness” and how people can “protect themselves in social situations”.
This attempt to recast his tirade as a public service announcement fooled very few. The Law Society’s president, Lisa Sam, publicly repudiated her vice-president’s views as “unacceptable,” noting pointedly that “the victim’s morality should not have been questioned in this manner.” In an extraordinary move, the Council of the Law Society requested Chia’s resignation.
Less than three days after his post, Chia Boon Teck stepped down as vice-president and council member of the Law Society, effective immediately. The Law Society thanked him for his past service with conspicuous brevity, then erased his profile from its website.
It was a dramatic fall from grace for a man who, until that moment, represented the Singapore legal profession in a leadership capacity.
Misogyny, mockery, and moral posturing
Why did Chia’s LinkedIn post ignite such ire? Beyond the immediate offense, many saw it as symptomatic of deeper issues — a pattern of misogynistic thinking and moral hypocrisy at odds with the standards expected of a senior lawyer. Chia’s comments weren’t a one-off lapse in judgment so much as the latest in a series of troubling statements he has made in public forums. If one looks closely, Chia has long exhibited a penchant for blaming or belittling those less powerful, while posturing as a guardian of law and order.Take Chia’s views on sexual assault and women. The March 2025 post wasn’t even the first time he appeared to mock or doubt a woman alleging sexual misconduct. In an earlier case, Chia defended a man accused of molesting a job applicant during an interview. How did he argue his client’s innocence? By digging into the accuser’s personal blog and using her own writings against her. On her blog, the woman had described herself as a “feisty” person — even recounting how she fought off a pimp once.
Chia pounced on this, contending that such a bold woman would surely have raised an alarm if the alleged molestation had really occurred. “It is all too easy for a woman to act demure in court,” Chia allegedly said in an interview with Straits Times in 2011 (that can no longer be found online though text downloads still exist), openly suggesting that female accusers can just fake being meek victims on the stand. Her feistiness, in his view, undermined her claims of being passively harassed. (Never mind that trauma affects victims in unpredictable ways — Chia implied a “truly strong” woman would have made a scene, and since she didn’t, her story was suspect.)
In the end, his client was convicted anyway (of a reduced charge) and fined, but Chia’s tactic spoke volumes. It revealed a mindset quick to cast aspersions on women’s credibility, painting them as liars or blameworthy for not fighting back. Years later, his LinkedIn diatribe followed the exact same playbook: the victim must have been asking for it, or lying, or both.
Little wonder that lawyers like Yuen Thio invoked the word “misogynistic” to describe Chia’s attitude, and that AWARE flagged it as a dangerous myth-making that shifts blame from perpetrator to victim.
Chia’s moral posturing doesn’t stop at gender issues. He often dons the mantle of the outraged citizen defending decency and authority — but only when it suits his agenda. This is the same lawyer, after all, who took it upon himself to trigger the arrest of a 17-year-old YouTuber for an irreverent video. In 2015, as Singapore was mourning founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, teenager Amos Yee posted a crude video criticising the late leader and comparing him to Jesus — sparking widespread controversy. While many found the video obnoxious, Chia Boon Teck found it criminal. He promptly lodged a police report against the teen and rallied 11 others to co-sign it.
But Chia didn’t stop at alerting the authorities; he also allegedly penned a letter to The Straits Times Forum page to justify his actions. In that letter, Chia thundered that “disrespectful comments” about Lee Kuan Yew “must not be tolerated”, and that those who make such comments “must be taken to task” by the authorities or by their employers or professional bodies.
“There is a limit to freedom of expression,” he lectured, hammering home that in Singapore, one’s free speech ends where Chia’s sense of order begins. He then quite literally practised what he preached: by reporting Amos Yee, he helped ensure the teen was charged and eventually jailed.
At the time, Chia framed this as a principled stand for “responsible speech”. He even told reporters that Amos’s video was “not a mindless rant” but a calculated, unlawful offense — implying that swift punishment was not just warranted but necessary.
Fast forward a decade, and observe the rich irony: Chia, who once zealously argued that freedom of speech should be curbed to protect society’s moral sanctities, was now invoking his own freedom to post snide commentary that many say crossed the line of basic decency.
The champion of “limits” on expression found himself on the receiving end of public outrage demanding limits on his expression. The parallel did not go unnoticed. In both cases — Amos Yee’s and the rape victim’s — Chia positioned himself as a sort of moral arbiter. But the contrast in what outraged him is telling: He was deeply offended by a teenager’s crude mockery of a powerful man, yet oddly comfortable trivialising a young woman’s account of being raped.
Free speech for the vulnerable 17-year-old? Not if it insulted authority. Free speech for the 50-something lawyer to question a rape survivor’s virtue? In Chia’s world, apparently yes, until society emphatically said no.
Power, privilege, and contradictions
The saga of Chia Boon Teck lays bare a portrait of contradictions. Here is a lawyer who ascended to the upper echelons of his profession — vice-president of the Law Society, a role one assumes would be accompanied by a keen sense of responsibility and ethics. Indeed, Chia himself has publicly extolled those virtues. In speeches to newly minted lawyers at Mass Call ceremonies, he has been known to wax lyrical about the challenges and nobility of legal practice. (He once even recounted how he had to mortgage his house to fund his law studies abroad — a humble-brag meant to inspire rookies about perseverance, no doubt.)As a leader of the bar, he was expected to uphold the profession’s dignity and the public’s trust. Yet the same man showed a propensity to use his platform to punch down — whether against a teenage blogger or a rape victim — and to flex his legal muscles in service of his personal moral reactions.
Chia’s case also underscores the privileges and blind spots that can come with power. Enjoying a successful career and social prestige, he seemed startlingly out of touch with social expectations of empathy, equality, and professionalism. He surrounded himself with luxury and like-minded elites (picture the supercar club’s exclusive gatherings), yet failed to grasp the basic duty of empathy that his leadership role demanded when commenting on a rape case.
It is striking that it took a massive public backlash and intervention by his peers (and superiors) to drive home what should have been obvious: that blaming a rape survivor in 2025 is not just “unacceptable” but utterly contrary to the values of the legal profession and modern society. The Law Society president’s statement said it plainly: Such views are “inimical for a person in a position of leadership to espouse.” In other words, Chia should have known better — or at least kept his retrograde opinions to himself.
So, who really is Chia Boon Teck? The answer, it appears, is a man who embodies a curious mix of bravado and obliviousness. He is someone who eagerly wraps himself in the trappings of authority — citing law and order, representing the establishment, enjoying high society acclaim — but who has repeatedly shown poor judgment in wielding that authority.
He has cast himself as a defender of virtue (be it protecting the honour of a national leader or warning of the “real-world risks” of casual sex), yet he has unapologetically trampled on the very virtues of compassion, fairness, and professionalism that the public rightly expects of senior lawyers. His pattern of commentary suggests a lawyer who uses the law not as a tool for justice, but as a cudgel to enforce his personal moral code or biases — against the weak, the young, or the voiceless.
In the end, Chia Boon Teck’s story is a cautionary tale for the legal profession. It reveals how hubris and hypocrisy can fester even in its top ranks. A man who drove Lamborghinis through the Alps and led a fraternity of the wealthy could not find the humility to empathise with a victim of sexual violence. A lawyer who once implored society to curb freedom of expression had to be shamed into understanding why his own expression deserved censure.
Chia’s rise and fall compel us to ask whether he ever truly understood the responsibility that comes with legal power — or whether he was too busy enjoying its perks. The next time a public figure postures as a guardian of morality while denigrating others, we would do well to remember Chia Boon Teck. His words provided the world a window into his character, and what we saw was not glamour and gravitas, but self-righteousness and scorn — the antithesis of the integrity a leader of law should uphold.
