In the centre of the trial of 6 City Harvest Church (CHC) leaders is actually Kong Hee’s wife, Sun Ho. So far, the court has heard that all the financial transactions and “cover-ups”, as alleged by prosecution, are to help fund Ms Ho’s pop career for the Crossover Project of the church – using Ms Ho’s secular pop music to help reach out to people and win converts
During the trial on 22 May, defence lawyer Senior Counsel Michael Khoo told the court that to help convert people to Christianity, Ms Ho, who previously sang gospel music at church services, had to “cross over to secular music”.
If the church had directly funded the project and people outside of the church came to know of its involvement, that might have “defeated the purpose”, said Mr Khoo. Thus, the church needed external companies such as Xtron Productions to fund and manage Ms Ho’s career.
Ms Ho was not implicated in the trial.
And in a separate investigation carried out by the Commissioner of Charities (COC), her two suspension orders against her were lifted on 13 May by COC. As such, Ms Ho could resume her role as Executive Director of the church. She co-founded CHC with her husband, Kong Hee, in 1989.
She then told the media, “I am very thankful to Jesus that I can resume my executive duties at such a crucial time for City Harvest Church.”
“I am truly glad that I have been fully vindicated.”
Eight other CHC leaders, including Kong, continued to be suspended by COC for alleged misconduct and mismanagement in the administration of the church. In fact, COC moved to remove the 8 from office last month. Ms Ho was left alone because COC said there was insufficient evidence that she contributed to the mismanagement of the church.
Who is Sun Ho?
Sun Ho’s full name is Ho Yeow Sun. She was born in 1972 and studied at Anglican High School and Victoria Junior College.
According to The New Paper (TNP) interview with her in 2004 (‘Will Sun shine as love guru?’, 24 Jan 2004), she told TNP that she had her first crush at the tender age of 9. By the time she was 16, she said that she had had 42 boyfriends.
This means from 9 to 16 years old, she had an average of 6 boyfriends a year or about one new boyfriend every 2 months. She said that at one time, she even dated 3 guys at the same time.
She moved from boy to boy because she was “searching for true love”. She said, “Like most schoolgirls, I had my share of crushes.”
Recalling her first crush, she said that she liked the boy so much that she took the same bus as he did and even asked her sister to pen a love note for the boy. She said, “It was the first time I had taken notice of someone of the opposite sex.”
She told the media that she suffered from depression during her younger years. She said that it was a terrible period for her. Besides relationship problems, she was also struggling with other personal issues.
She admitted that she suffered depression then as she was “very insecure”, “very selfish”, and “holding on too tightly to too many things”. She said that in her quest for love, she had hurt her friends.
She said that at one stage, she locked herself at home for 5 straight months without stepping out. She would also use a razor to cut her own hands.
She revealed that a “good friend” later helped her get out of her depression.
In 1989, she met Kong Hee. He was a church youth leader then and she a volunteer. They got married 3 years later in 1992. She was 20 years old while Kong was 28.
In the same year she met Kong, CHC was founded as a department of Bethany Christian Centre (Assemblies of God church).
When TNP asked Kong how he felt being the 43rd man in Sun Ho’s life, he said, “For me, it’s a non issue. What’s past is in the past. We live for the now and the future.”
In a later interview with TNP in 2007 [Link], Sun Ho revealed that she was sexually abused by a man whom she knew when she was 6.
The incident happened at the man’s house when she was there playing with her siblings. The man asked her to sit on his lap. Afterwards, she felt a ‘pain’.
As she grew older, and began to understand what had happened, she grew angry. She started blaming herself and that was the time she went into depression.
She said that she had already forgiven the man.
TR Emeritus
*Article first appeared on www.TREmeritus.com