Re: Ex-CNB chief Ng Boon Gay faces 4 'sex-for-favours' corruption charges
'It's my role as wife' to stand by Ng
WHEN Madam Yap Yen Yen was doing spring cleaning just before Chinese New Year, she inadvertently left her husband's old police uniform hanging on the wall.
Former top cop Ng Boon Gay, walking past the still freshly pressed shirt, ran his fingers over the garments he had put on almost daily for 19 years and recalled the many raids and operations he had overseen.
"When he saw that shirt, he kept saying how he missed his work," Madam Yap said yesterday, in an interview just hours after a judge ruled that her husband was not guilty of corruption.
"I have to hide all his police items so he will not remember."
Mr Ng, a police scholarship holder who rose up the ranks to head the Criminal Investigation Department and the Central Narcotics Bureau, saw his career abruptly interrupted when he was hauled up by the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau in December 2011.
The former senior assistant commissioner broke down when the subject of his life-long occupation came up yesterday, leaving his wife to talk about his love for the police force.
She has also been in the spotlight for accompanying him to court on each of the 15 days of the trial, which spanned more than four months.
She sat stoically in the public gallery as sordid details of his trysts with former IT executive Cecilia Sue were revealed. At times, she would become tearful and grip the hands of friends or family members beside her.
Yesterday, when asked why she publicly stood by him despite the affair, the 44-year-old said simply: "It's my role as a wife."
But what of reporters pestering her for comments, and having her pictures plastered in newspapers and online?
"You must tune yourself to a different channel," she said.
"It's crisis management. Perhaps I could have supported him from home, but the right thing is to be by his side."
But the question remains: Why does the soft-spoken, devoted wife love him still?
"He is filial, he loves me, and he's intelligent," she said.
In the couple's first full-length media interview, she revealed how she met Mr Ng in 1985 when she was a precocious 15-year-old and he was a student at Hwa Chong Junior College. He was her first boyfriend while she, studying at the now-defunct Willow Avenue Secondary, was his first "real girlfriend".
They got married in 1994.
Mr Ng, 46, said the longest they have been apart in the last three decades is three days. The former Victoria Junior College student would accompany him on work trips overseas, he said, adding: "I cannot live without her."
During the times he became emotional during the interview, she exerted a calming influence, steadying his nerves and lovingly brushing his hands.
The past year has been, in his own words, tiring and traumatic.
It has come full circle, he said, recalling how reports of the probe came out on the second day of Chinese New Year last year.
He knew reporters would be hounding him at his registered address in Bukit Batok, so the couple moved to a friend's house. They stayed there for weeks, and he ventured out only late at night for runs.
"My friend would get food for us. It was a traumatic period," he said.
Running has been the best stress reliever for the man involved in major crime cases such as the Kallang knife attacks. The last thing he did before going to sleep the night before the verdict? Run. "If I don't run, I'll go crazy."
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