Andreae had called the night before to alert her to a radio programme. Jessica tuned in just in time to catch a female caller gushing about the dashing STAR team member whose standee had been sighted all over her neighbourhood. The caller shared her hope that the Little India riot could be adapted into a movie starring the real-life heartthrob of a hero and that the casting director would run an open audition for fans like her to try out for the female lead. She ended her rambling by dedicating Bruno Mars’ “When I Was Your Man” to the most gorgeous man in blue she had ever laid eyes on.

Jessica had thought the female caller jejune and foolish until it struck her that she herself had behaved very much the same way when she first crossed paths with Chong Jin. Blinkered by infatuation, she had endured the afflictions he laid upon her without recognising them as such. She had been a willing, compliant victim. She should be the last person to judge anyone.

But Chong Jin, she felt entitled to judge. The man was a monster. That someone who resorted to blackmailing a girlfriend using sex tapes he had filmed without her knowledge should receive adoration from the public infuriated her. This was a mad world. The truth was contorted beyond recognition by the skewed angle with which the media trained its spotlight and everyone who bobbed their heads and danced to the pulsating beat of the falsity was complicit in this madness.

Were Jessica honest, she would admit that she felt slighted. With the release of her interview footage, she had anticipated a wave of public admiration for her courage in speaking up for the migrant worker community. That did not come about. Instead, the viewers’ attention was all but consumed by the last two seconds of the footage, when the videographer had zoomed in to highlight the bruise marks on her wrist.

If the public had speculated about what had happened to her in that ambulance before the valiant STAR team hero came to the rescue, they were now convinced they knew the truth. One of their own had been raped by a rioter.

There was instantaneous uproar on social media. Several online petitions sprang up to demand accountability. The comatose rapist should not be allowed to get away with the crime just because he was not awake to defend himself. There was clamouring for the man to be sentenced, flipped over on the hospital bed so he could be lashed with the maximum 24 strokes of the cane, then wheeled into a solitary cell in prison and left to rot for the rest of his unconscious life.