She was a quiet and, by her own admission, a guai (obedient) child. During Chinese New Year when all her cousins ran to her grandmother clamouring for red packets, Dawn Tan would stand in the corner, too timid to demand her share.

“My grandmother would come to me and knock me on my head and call me gong kia (stupid child),” recalled Dawn, now 46.

Dawn was a quiet child who rarely stood up for herself. “If my mum told me to stand at one spot, I would stand there for an hour till she came back. I wouldn’t move.”

The label stung and left a dark stain on her self-perception that would take years to erase.

It did not help that hers was a strict household run by a mother who kept her on a tight leash. Young Dawn was not allowed to attend any enrichment classes after school. Her mother thought it was too dangerous for her to return home alone instead of taking the school bus right after school.

As a result, Dawn did not know how to use public transport. At 14, her friend had to go to Dawn’s home to fetch her to the public library and send her back.

Dawn at 14.

Yet seven years later while her peers were celebrating their independence as adults, 21-year-old Dawn lost hers when she was imprisoned for the first time.

Free from the stranglehold

Dawn broke free from her sheltered upbringing when she was 15. That was the year she made friends with a group of older girls from her school who introduced her to smoking and fights. They would brawl until “my eye and my mouth were bruised”, she described.

“I found them very cool. They were pretty and I wanted to be like them. With my friends I felt I could say what I wanted and they understood me,” Dawn told Salt&Light.

The mother who used to “nag me, slap me and not let me go out” could no longer control her, especially not after she ran away from home. Dawn had wanted to meet her friends at the foot of her block, but her mother had refused to allow her.

“She pulled my hair and said: ‘If you dare to go out, don’t come back.’”

So Dawn left and did not return for three days. As she hid at her friend’s house in the next block, her family and friends searched for her.

“Then I heard the news that my mum said that if I came back she would not beat me anymore, she wouldn’t even scold me.

“When I went home, my mother was very wary. She hugged me. That was the first hug I ever got from her. After that, I got the upper hand. I could do whatever I wanted.”

That included quitting school. Dawn had already been cutting classes. Then she was wrongly accused of slapping a girl from another school.

“My teacher said: ‘I don’t know how your mother educated you.’ I got angry, banged on the table and said: ‘Who are you to talk about my mum? You can’t judge my parents.’ Then I walked away.”

The teacher demanded she apologise, but Dawn refused. So the vice-principal and discipline master got involved. At the parent-teacher meeting, Dawn said she wanted to quit school. She did not expect her father to take her at her word.

He simply said: “You make the choice. Don’t regret it next time.”

Good girl gone bad

At first, Dawn worked as a receptionist. No longer in school, she slowly lost touch with the gang of girls.

Out of school at 15, Dawn started working as a receptionist.

At 17, she became a model. It was the classic story of being discovered by chance. She had accompanied a friend for an audition and ended up being signed on by the modelling agency as well.

Dawn at 17, the year she started modelling and taking drugs.

Most of the models kept to themselves, but there were a few who enjoyed clubbing and drugs. Dawn’s desire to be part of this group would lead her down the slippery slope of self-destruction. 

Dawn during her modelling days.

“I wanted to get into their good books and be accepted by them. So I started to go to discos with the other models, follow them drinking. Then they asked me to try (a drug called) Ermin.

“The pill made me a different person. I was very withdrawn and wouldn’t talk much, but when I took the pill, I didn’t care anymore. I talked more. It made me confident.”

Dawn (left) at the Miss Chinatown pageant.

This was nothing like the glue-sniffing she had tried as a 15-year-old. Harder drugs like ketamine, ecstasy and amphetamine followed. At 21, while trying to score some drugs, police raided her supplier’s place and Dawn was arrested along with him.

She recalled: “I felt very sad. It was like the end of the world for me. I was very scared.

“My mum cried and cried. She went to court and when the warden wanted to pull me away, she cried and reached out for my hand. But in my heart, I was thinking: ‘Huh, cry again.’”

The incarceration did not deter Dawn. After her nine-month sentence, she returned to her old life.

“The moment I got out, I called back all my old friends to go and drink and then to ‘extend’ which was to go to someone’s house to continue to take drugs.”

Within months, Dawn was arrested for drug offences again. This time she was given a three-year sentence.

“I couldn’t stop. Drugs were my friend. I felt so meaningless without drugs,” she admitted to Salt&Light.

Less than a year after she was released from prison, she was arrested for the third time. Her prison sentence was three and a half years. Dawn was just 25 years old then.

A song for the soul

Mid-way through her sentence, Dawn was caught for switching name tags with another inmate.

“Her tag was pink but because she was a tomboy, she didn’t like it. Mine was yellow so she switched name tags with me.”

Dawn was placed in isolation for the rest of her sentence for this transgression. Alone with nothing but her regrets and cockroaches – ‘I was most scared of cockroaches” – Dawn woke up to her reality.

“I thought: In prison, still get into this thing. How long must I take the blame for my friends? I couldn’t accept that I was again suffering because of someone else.”

One day, Dawn heard a Hokkien song drifting from the cell block next to hers.

“I was very attracted to this song. The next day when I went to the yard, I pulled aside someone and asked her, ‘Can you tell me what is this song?’”

She was directed to inmates who attended Christian counselling who told her the song was called 阮吟诗赞美主 (In Praise of God). Intrigued, she asked to join Christian counselling.

“From young, I had always liked music. I didn’t know Christian counselling would sing such nice songs.

“The lyrics really spoke to me: ‘I ask the Lord to guide my steps. Though this path is difficult, with the Lord’s presence, I am not afraid. Lord, Lord, I love You. I dedicate my life to You. With my song, I praise and call upon You.’”

“You have a new life now”

Nearly two months after attending Christian counselling, Dawn encountered God. At one of the sessions, the participants were asked to think of those who had hurt them and to forgive them.

“I thought way back and I realised how my Ah Ma (grandmother) had hurt me by calling me gong kia, how my mother had said a lot of things to me. I also thought about those I had hurt.

“That session, I closed my eyes and cried and I cried. As I was crying, I saw a Man come down from the stairs in a white robe. It was so bright and He just came down, and I rested my head on His feet and He hugged me.

“Then He told me: ‘Your sins are forgiven. Your guilt I have forgiven. Your shame I have forgiven. You have a new life now.’ And He hugged me when He said that.

“I didn’t know then that it was Jesus. I just kept crying.”

When Dawn opened her eyes, the counsellors came to talk to her and she told them of her vision. They told her that the session had long ended, but she was still crying and she was “shining so brightly at the corner”.

“What they saw, me shining in the corner, it was like a confirmation of what I saw. I was so surprised because I came just to listen to the sermon, sing songs and talk to friends. I didn’t even know Jesus then.”

A family transformed

After that, Dawn was consumed with a desire to know God more. She read the Bible and prayed, and even fasted for a week to pray for her parents.

“I used to ask God why all these things happened to me. But when I read the Bible front to back three times, I realised so many things were answered inside.

“I realised it was because of my own choices. Before, I couldn’t accept that.”

This time upon her release, she got rid of her old handphone number.

“Somehow, God gave me a switch in the mind, like ting! I came out feeling like I didn’t want to contact my old friends.”

Instead, she arose early in the morning to pray and listen to worship songs.

While Dawn was in prison, her mother also became a Christian as did her sister and brother.

Dawn (right) with her mother.

“At one point in time, me and my siblings were all in prison. During that time, my mum was always crying and asking: ‘Why my children like that?’

“My mother’s sister took her to church. My mum went because she wanted to get any help she could.

“When she got home, she cried out, ‘I don’t know what God You are. I don’t know how to pray. I just want You to help my children.’”

The women in the church started to do Bible study with Dawn’s mother and she soon became a Christian.

“From then on, when she came to visit me she always had a smile. She never cried anymore. I was shocked.”

Dawn (second from left) and her mother (bottom right) with the group of women who first did Bible study with her mother. Some 20 years on, they are still together.

At Chinese New Year this year, Dawn’s mother made things right with her. She told Dawn: “I want to apologise to you for always slapping you when you were a kid.”

(Left to right) Dawn’s younger sister, mother, niece and Dawn.

When Dawn replied that it was “all in the past, I don’t blame you”, her mother continued: “Nevertheless I am sorry for what I did.”

This was the closure that Dawn needed. But there was more that God did to transform Dawn’s life.

Look out for Part 2 of Dawn’s story.

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