Nonetheless, he continues. Then, he proceeds to penetrate her with his penis, concurrently removing her clothes. She attempts to push him off and says no, but still he doesn’t stop.
This man is Singaporean Youtuber Eden Ang.
“This happened in 2015. Back then, I didn’t come out because I didn’t have evidence and I just wanted to forget about whatever happened. Furthermore, I’m also in the media industry and I felt like I would be on the losing end.
I got in touch with Eden Ang because of work. We first spoke via a formal email exchange, where his mobile number was given to me. We proceeded to text. Everything was professional, until one day he texted to ask me over for a movie. The situation felt weird, but I thought nothing about it. I turned him down.
A few days later, he asked me the same thing. I said, ‘I don’t want to watch. Cinema waste money.’ He replied, ‘No, watch at home.’ He spoke in a way that made me think he was interested in dating me, so I thought I would give him a chance. The computer was in his room, so we sat on his bed. Nothing happened that night, it was just awkward. After the movie, he tried to persuade me to stay over, but I said no and went home.
The second time we hung out at his house, he made boyfriend-type of advances, even though we were never officially together. He tried to touch me by trying to hug me.
As our arrangement progressed on subsequently, there were times when I continued going to his house supposedly to talk about work. But I remember whenever I went over, there was never any work done. He would always try to touch me instead.
On one occasion, he pulled me over and suddenly reached up to my skirt to touch me. He said he was horny and he believed that girls want it. Of course I resisted and said no. After that, he kind of used force to try to persuade me. When I rejected him, he would show a ‘black’ face and ignore me.
The third time I went to his house, he touched my buttocks and vagina and tried to get me aroused. He grabbed my buttocks first. This was followed with him reaching his hand past my panties to my vagina. I pushed his hand away and tried to stop him, but he ignored me and persisted.
I told him very honestly that I’ve never done this before, even with a guy I date. He told me not to bluff, and that he was sure all girls want it. Deep inside I knew he wanted to have sex. I felt it was wrong, but I also didn’t know whether I was too conservative or sensitive. He told me I needed to open up.
When I didn’t let him do it, he got angry. He said, ‘Girls that are not obedient need to be punished.’ He told me to go to the bathroom and take off my clothes. I asked him what for, because in my head, I knew it was wrong. I just didn’t know how to reject him. So I removed my clothes, leaving only my bra and panties on. He insisted I remove my undergarments, and I eventually gave in.
Eden then took out his mobile phone. He said, ‘I just want to take photo. Because you don’t let me do it, so whenever I just want to feel high, I’ll look at your picture. If you don’t let me do some more, I go look for other girls.’ I kept telling him not to take my pictures, but he got very fierce and I felt lost and confused. All I could do was stand to one side of the door. Now he has my pictures in his phone. After he finished, I got dressed and sat in the bedroom not talking to him. Shortly after, I said I wanted to go home and left.”
He keeps thinking all girls want sex, even when we say we don’t want. He kept forcing me to say his dick is bigger, and in the end I went, ‘Ya, ya, ya’.
He also asked if I owned a G-string. When I said I didn’t, he said he’d take me to buy one so I could wear it for him. He also never wanted me to wear bra and panties when I was out with him.
A few days after he took pictures of me without my consent, he contacted me to explain his actions, telling me that he will make things up to me. He also wanted me to hang out with him at his house soon. Again, I relented.
This was an evening when I went to his house for ‘work’. He brought me to his bedroom again and started fingering me. He pushed me to the bed and said, ‘I know you want it, I know you want it.’ I said, ‘Don’t want la, don’t want la.’ Everything happened so quickly, I was in pain. I told him honestly that I was a virgin. He replied, ‘It’s okay, let me teach you how to do it, let the master teach you. You must try; if you never try, you won’t know how good it is.’
He kept fingering, me even though I tried to stop him. And then he penetrated me with his penis after that. There was sexual intercourse, but no it wasn’t consensual. I pushed him off and kept saying no. But he just kept going, did not stop, and carried on penetrating me. He repeated, ‘You have to go on; if you don’t go on, it’ll be more painful.’ While doing this, he removed my clothes.
Then he said that he was going to ejaculate on my tummy. I wasn’t sure what he was saying, but I remember seeing him remove his condom and ejaculating on my tummy. He then asked me to wash up because it was ‘dirty’, and not to allow the semen to drip. I went to the toilet to wash up and got dressed. After we were done, I left the house.”
A few days after we had sex, Eden asked me to go over to his house, which I agreed. Upon arriving, Eden took me over to his bedroom to try and get me horny. He said, ‘After your first time, do you want it again? You want to do it again, I’m sure you want it right? Feels good right?’ He said all this while fingering me. Since I was still feeling the pain, there was no penetration this time. He got angry and we got into an argument over this issue. He said, ‘If you leave the house, don’t come back again.’ I left the house.
After that incident, things became ugly because I started to give in less. I also started opposing him a lot. Then one day with my good friend, who is mutual friends with Eden, I asked her what she thought about him. She told me to stay away and PM-ed me screenshots of other women’s chat history with Eden. The content was the same: asking them to go over for a movie, and so on.
I felt very angry, and asked to meet him. Then I confronted him with those screenshots. He argued that those girls are ‘just friends’, and said I’m sensitive. I told him I wanted to stop everything, and left his house. He ran to the door and grabbed me, and said, ‘You better don’t tell anybody about what happened between us.’ Then he forced me to delete all his messages in front of him. I got angry and did it. I told him to delete my photos on his phone too, but he said, ‘I don’t want to delete. Why should I delete? This is my phone.’
There was a huge argument and I stormed off. We never spoke again. Till today, I don’t know whether he still has my pictures.”
With Sheryl, Eden claimed to be a photographer seeking a model for an outdoor fashion shoot. When she asked how many women he had photographed prior, he replied, “Just enough until I see pussy I no reaction. Lol numb to it already.”
Despite meeting under professional circumstances, the screenshots tell a different story.
Eden termed himself the boss, “because the photographer is the boss and the model is his employee”. (Sheryl did not receive a single cent though.)
He asked if Sheryl was willing to be his 小三 (mistress), “because your boobs very big. I feel quite suit lor”.
Sheryl tells me that Eden also sent her “other people’s dick pictures” over Whatsapp, which she deleted immediately. Even though Eden was attached to someone else then, he asked her to give her virginity to him. She rejected him every time.
Then he added, “I want to discipline [my ex]. She was doing a shoot and the uncles were complaining that her dress got VPL very ugly. So they told her go change G-string. But she never bring, so they told her do a pantyless shoot (PS). But when she did her PS, she didn’t cover properly and got one uncle snap one shot that can see everything. So after the shoot, I had to discipline her. It’s really not good for her.”
He even brought her to Bugis Street to buy a G-string, as she didn’t own any.
On the way to the shoot venue in a cab, Eden touched Sheryl’s thigh in a cab, “assessing her physique” to prepare for the shoot. Then, during the shoot itself, he rolled up her skirt (which was mid-thigh length) to mini-skirt length and pulled down her top to resemble an off-shoulder top. He also asked her to try a “more daring pose” by pressuring her to remove her top and wear only his white shirt over her bare body.
Sheryl complied. She’d thought Eden was a celebrity, hence fully understood the boundaries that he should not cross. The entire shoot lasted about two hours.
After the shoot, Eden continued asking Sheryl to “meet up to chill”, but she would make excuses that she wasn’t free.
When Sheryl said she didn’t want to do it, Eden persisted. He said, “He offer $200 topless private shoot. Can be accompanied by boss. Photos for his pleasure only. […] Can wear shorts. Just show boobs.”
Again, Sheryl refused, and Eden said, “Because you only want to shoot for boss right. Not comfortable with others.”
Eden didn’t seem to register her refusal once more, and replied, “Good girl. You only trust boss right. That’s good. No others.”
Sheryl wants to remain anonymous for this article, because she is afraid Eden would use the photos against her. The last time Eden contacted her was via Whatsapp in July 2016.
This was also supposedly the “special outfit” that Eden required 18-year-old Lilith to wear when she came over to his home to clean his equipment room on 10 January 2018. Since she came out on Instagram as the ‘first’ survivor, no other media publication has reached out to her to get the full story.
When Eden and her first met at the end of last year, Lilith offered her services to him as a makeup artist, but was hired as a “personal assistant”. Her first job was to clean the room where he stored his camera, props, and costumes.
That wasn’t the first time she had hung out or interacted with Eden. The week before, he had started sending her “inappropriate” texts, ignoring the fact she had a boyfriend.
The day before Lilith went to Eden’s house, she assisted him with filming D Stands For Decoy. After filming ended that day, she and her boyfriend wrote a long paragraph asking Eden to back off, and Eden agreed that the two of them should just remain friends.
This was apparently the only reason Lilith eventually felt it was “safe” to show up to clean his equipment room on 10th January this year. On hindsight, it was “very naive” of her to believe his words at that time.
Nonetheless, Lilith also agreed to wear a G-string to work that day. At Eden’s house, he asked her to take off her pants.
She shares, “He said, ‘You better do it before I come back or I’ll spank you.’ And I was like, ‘Help me.’ For me, my coping mechanism is to let things play out then go home and cry about it. I was just trying to get through the day. Eventually, I just complied. I thought if I took off my pants, he wouldn’t touch me.”
In the equipment room, Eden spanked her for the first time. To fight back, she turned around and scratched him “really hard” on his arm. He didn’t back off, but instead merely told her that she should “kiss it to make it better”.
Afterwards, he called her to the living room to give her comments on his video editing. There, he asked her to sit on his lap. When she refused, he forcefully pulled her onto his lap. He also kept “complimenting [her] ass” and “groped [her] ass a few times”.
“I was scared. Many people question why I didn’t just leave the house, but my mom taught me in a situation like that, if you struggle, it can get worse. This is his house, after all, and I don’t know how to unlock the door. So I didn’t leave.”
After the day’s events, Lilith was supposed to meet a friend for dinner, and Eden offered to come along and pay for their meal. Her friend cancelled, so Lilith had dinner with Eden alone. She understands that she could have left once she was out of his house, but reiterates that her “coping mechanism was to play it normal”.
That was the last time she saw Eden.
A week after going to the police station, Lilith told her good friend Kuroe Kun about what happened with Eden. The rest is history: Kuroe penned a Facebook post on 25 January, which went viral, about Lilith’s incident. In the post that has since been deleted, Kuroe alleged that Eden Ang sexually harassed Lilith.
Five days later, Lilith came forward as the anonymous girl mentioned in the post.
“Right now, I’m just waiting. The investigation period takes a few months. In a sense, it’s relieving yet scary because you don’t know what the verdict’s gonna be. At the end, it could go to court or it could not even be worth pursuing. It’s scary for me, because I don’t want to have done all this for nothing,” Lilith says.
“There are a lot of people out there who say they’ll wait for the verdict [before passing judgement], but what if the verdict is no further action? What if Eden’s at fault, but they can’t charge him for it? Then people are going to start calling me a liar, even though everything I said did happen.”
In another Facebook post, gymnast Nicolette Lim said she was verbally harassed by Eden in 2015 when she was 18.
Eden had commented that he was able to see her pubic hair in her photos. He also asked her to audition for a ‘role’ in his home by wearing a mini-skirt and g-string. She used her mother’s name to get him to back off in the end. All the alleged verbal harassment took place over text messages, which she has since deleted. Her own attempts to retrieve her old messages with software were unsuccessful.
Over the phone, Nicolette echoes Dawn and Sheryl’s sentiment that Eden was a “reputable Youtuber”. That was why she continued texting him.
“He has fame on his side, so he doesn’t need to do this kind of thing. It caught me by surprise,” she says.
Nicolette says, “I wasn’t sure if me coming out publicly was going to help the case, but my colleagues and friends encouraged me to do so. When Lilith came out, she was just one person. I thought I should come out to give Lilith backup. I wanted to tell her she’s not alone.”
In hindsight, Dawn understands that she was foolish for returning to his house over and over again. In response to why she kept doing so after the first time he touched her without her consent, she concedes that she still believed Eden to be a proper guy. She assumed “that [first time he touched her] would be the only time he did it” and wanted to give him more chances.
However, she continues to reinforce, both to me and the police, that she was never in a relationship with Eden because he didn’t want them to be.
While telling me her story, she is calm and composed, until she gets to the part where she needs to recount Eden penetrating her.
Then, she breaks down.
Recounts of Dawn’s and other women have helped me understand the ‘type’ of women Eden approaches. They are usually young, insecure in relationships, and lack the confidence to say ‘no’. They are also good-hearted, constantly believing in giving others the benefit of doubt. He also meets them under professional circumstances.
On top of this, they all have something to lose. Many are terrified of risking their career and reputation should they speak out, and would rather remain silent than to shake the status quo.
But then, he met Lilith.
At the time of publishing, Wah!Banana and Disney’s Maker Studios, both of which we understand employ Eden Ang, have not given us their comment on this case.
This piece would not have been possible without the courage of these women, as well as the individuals who went above and beyond to persuade survivors whom they knew to speak out.
If you have experienced any form of sexual assault or harassment, please contact AWARE’s Sexual Assault Care Centre at 6779 0282 or email them at sacc@aware.org.sg. More information can be found here.
Have something to add to this story? Drop our writer a note at grace@ricemedia.co.
