COMMENT | Out of the shadows - the horror of child sexual abuse

COMMENT | This could just be an urban legend, but the physiologist in me knows that if you put a frog in boiling water, it either dies immediately or jumps out while it still can.

If you place a frog in a pot of cold water and gradually raise the temperature, it will get used to the temperature until it is too late to do anything.

For too long, we have been frogs in water where the temperature is gradually rising. In Kelantan, for the last 33 years, the water situation has been getting incrementally worse but no one noticed. We use bore water that turns from crystal clear to turbid in the blink of an eye.

We are told it is OK and we believe that half-truth. We wait for buses under leaky roofs without complaining much even if sheltered locations are becoming few and far between. We are told we need to adjust according to the situation, and we also believe that half-truth.

I thought this was a “Kelantan” thing, until last month. I realised we all are complacent frogs when it comes to the unimaginable horror of physical and sexual abuse faced by hundreds of children placed in charity homes across the country.