SINGAPORE, Dec 3 — Workers’ Party (WP) chief Pritam Singh revealed on Thursday (Dec 2) that party leaders knew that former Member of Parliament (MP) Raeesah Khan had lied in a parliamentary speech a week after she delivered it and nearly three months before she set the record straight in Parliament.

The party did not act on it any earlier because he had wanted to give her time to talk to her family about the matter, and because she had to be the one to correct the untruth in Parliament.

Speaking at a press conference at the party’s headquarters on Geylang Road, Singh said that when he asked her about it, Raeesah had stuck to her initial account at first — that she had accompanied a resident to a police station to report a sexual assault and that the victim was treated insensitively by police officers.

Then after she was pressed repeatedly, she eventually confessed that she had been untruthful and that she herself had been a victim of a sexual assault, which up until then was unknown to the party.

She also revealed other related matters "of a deeply personal nature”, Singh said.

"Her personal trauma and sexual assault explained why she was not truthful about accompanying the victim to police as she had asserted in her speech on Aug 3. She admitted this to party leadership about a week after she delivered her speech,” he added.

"Of immediate concern to me was the fact that Raeesah had not previously informed her family members of her sexual assault, which had traumatised her greatly.

"In my judgement, it was important that she did so before she could fully address the reasons behind her untruthful conduct in Parliament and to correct the record.”

Two other party leaders, Sylvia Lim and Faisal Manap, were also made aware of her untruths at the same time, Singh said.

Raeesah was not at the WP press conference on Thursday. When asked why, Singh replied: "She’s resigned from the party. This is a party matter that we have to carry forward.”

Raeesah, who was formerly an MP for Sengkang Group Representation Constituency (GRC), eventually admitted in Parliament on Nov 1 that she had lied in her August speech.

She then resigned from the party on Tuesday, the same day a meeting was held by the party’s disciplinary panel, which had been tasked to look into her conduct.

In her confession in Parliament, she said that she had fabricated the account about accompanying a sexual assault victim to the police station, and that she had heard about the incident from someone at a women’s support group that she had attended.

She revealed that she did not want to disclose that she was attending the group session at first because she was a survivor of a sexual assault herself and "did not have the courage to publicly admit that I was part of it”.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Singh laid out the timeline of events: