The Protection from Harassment Act 2014 gives people in Singapore a civil route out of harassment, stalking and doxxing, separate from any police report. You apply to the Protection from Harassment Court for a protection order, and where the situation is urgent, an expedited order can be heard within days.
I’m Roy. I’m an Associate Director at A.W. Law LLC and I run civil disputes in the State Courts. This post is about POHA from the victim’s side. If you are the one who has been reported or charged, read the companion piece on being charged under POHA instead.
What POHA actually covers
POHA has two halves. Part 2 creates criminal offences, which the police and prosecutors handle. Part 3 gives you civil claims and orders you bring yourself, without waiting for anyone to charge the other person.
Four sections do most of the work for a victim:
| Section | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Section 3 | Threatening, abusive, insulting, sexual or indecent words, behaviour or communications, or publishing identity information, done with intent to cause harassment, alarm, distress or humiliation |
| Section 4 | The same conduct without proof of intent, where a victim is likely to be caused harassment, alarm, distress or humiliation |
| Section 5 | Conduct causing fear, provocation or facilitation of violence |
| Section 7 | Unlawful stalking |
Section 11 of the Protection from Harassment Act 2014 lets you sue for damages for a breach of any of those sections. Section 12 lets you ask for a protection order. Both run through the Protection from Harassment Court, a District Court designated under section 16E which holds the full civil and criminal jurisdiction of a District Court.
Conduct from overseas is not automatically out of reach. Section 17 gives the court jurisdiction in defined situations, including where the person was outside Singapore but you were here when the conduct hit you, and they knew or had reason to believe you would be.
Harassment, stalking and doxxing
Doxxing sits in section 3(1)(c): publishing identity information about you or someone close to you. That means your name, address, NRIC number, phone number, workplace, photographs, anything that identifies you. The Act’s own illustration is an ex-partner who posts abusive claims about someone, then posts their photograph and mobile number so strangers start calling.
Stalking under section 7 needs a course of conduct rather than one incident. The Act lists examples:
- Following you, or someone whose safety you would reasonably be worried about.
- Repeated communications to you, about you, or made to look like they came from you.
- Loitering outside your home, your workplace, or anywhere you regularly go.
- Engaging in online activity in a space you visit, or making a presence felt there.
- Interfering with your property.
- Keeping you under surveillance.
Two things I see go wrong before anyone reaches a courtroom. The first is evidence. People describe a year of messages and arrive with a handful of screenshots, no dates, no sender details. Screenshot the whole thread with the timestamps visible, export the chat log where the app allows it, and keep a one-line diary of each incident on the day it happens.
The second is blocking. Blocking and deleting feels like taking control back, and it quietly destroys the record you need. Mute the person if you have to. Keep the messages.
Protection orders and expedited orders
A protection order under section 12 is a court order telling the other person to stop. The court has to be satisfied on a balance of probabilities, meaning more likely than not, of two things: that the respondent breached section 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 in respect of you, and that they are likely to keep going or do it again.
The order can then:
- Prohibit specific conduct towards you or a related person.
- Require the offending posts or messages to be taken down, and similar ones not published.
- Refer either side to counselling or mediation.
- Exclude the respondent from a shared residence and give you exclusive occupation of it, under section 12(2C), whether or not they own or lease it.
Where a psychiatric condition is likely to be feeding the behaviour, section 13B allows a mandatory treatment order of up to 36 months alongside the protection order.
An expedited protection order under section 13 is the interim version, for when waiting is not realistic. You need prima facie evidence, which means enough on first look, that the conduct happened, that it is likely to continue or happen imminently, and that it would have a substantial adverse effect on you or your day-to-day activities. Under the Protection from Harassment Court framework launched in June 2021, the courts target an expedited hearing within 48 to 72 hours, or within 24 hours where violence is a risk, and about four weeks for the full protection order.
Breach of either order is a criminal offence under section 10: a fine of up to S$5,000, jail of up to 6 months, or both.
Orders about false statements
If the real problem is a false statement of fact about you rather than harassment, POHA has its own set of orders. A stop publication order under section 15A halts it. A correction order under section 15B makes the publisher carry a notice saying it is false. A disabling order under section 15C makes an internet intermediary cut access to it, and sections 15D and 15E extend correction notices further.
For a stop publication order the court needs to be satisfied that the respondent published the statement, that it is false, and that the order is just and equitable. Section 15A(2) makes the point that the order can be made even where the publisher did not know the statement was false.
That overlaps with defamation, and the two do different jobs. POHA gets the thing down quickly. A defamation suit is how you recover for the damage done to your reputation, and it takes longer and costs more, as our note on defamation damages and penalties sets out. If the reputational loss is the substance of your complaint, look at the defamation claim route.
One practical point on money. Section 11A allows enhanced damages where the conduct was online, you made a reasonable written request asking the person to deal with it, and they ignored it without reasonable excuse. So send that written request, keep it short and unemotional, and keep a copy.
Where you file and what it costs
Everything civil under POHA goes to the Protection from Harassment Court, in one of two tracks.
| Simplified proceedings | Standard proceedings | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed through | Community Justice and Tribunals System | eLitigation |
| Filing fee | S$30 for most claims | S$100 |
| Time limit | Within 2 years of the incident | Within 6 years |
| Damages | Up to S$20,000 | No such cap |
| Parties | One claimant, up to 5 respondents | No such cap |
After filing you serve the claim and the case management conference notice on the respondent within 14 days, then file proof of service within 8 days. The State Courts guide on filing and serving a protection from harassment application has the forms and the current fees.
A police report and a civil application are not alternatives, and plenty of people do both. The report puts the criminal offence in the hands of investigators, who decide on charges. The civil application is the one you control, and it produces the order that tells the person to stop.
Since 29 June 2026 there is a third door for online harm. The Online Safety Commission, set up under the Online Safety (Relief and Accountability) Act 2025, takes reports at no cost and can direct a poster, a group administrator or a platform to disable access to content or restrict an account. Its first phase covers online harassment, doxxing, online stalking, intimate image abuse and image-based child abuse.
When family violence is the real issue
If the person is a family member, the analysis changes. Family violence between family members runs under Part 7 of the Women’s Charter 1961, and the remedy is a personal protection order applied for at the Family Justice Courts. Different court, different test, different forms from the POHA route described above. Start with our page on personal protection orders.
The gap POHA fills is the one people miss. A boyfriend, girlfriend or ex-partner you were never married to is generally not a family member for a personal protection order, so POHA is the route. Parliament recognised the pattern: section 8B of POHA carries an enhanced penalty where the victim was in an intimate relationship with the offender.
What to do next
Build the record before anything else. The application lives or dies on it, and the version of the record you assemble six months later is always thinner than the one you could have kept from day one. Then get clear on what you actually want: the conduct stopped, the content taken down, or money. Those are different orders under different sections, and the forms follow the choice. Last, check you are in the right building. A family violence matter filed at the Protection from Harassment Court costs you weeks you did not have.
If the harassment has been running for months, or the person has already ignored a written request, the first ten minutes with us are free. A POHA claim is a statutory tort, so book a Tort Claim Discovery Session and we will tell you which door to walk through.
