WHILE the Asian entertainment world is trying to get over the tawdry photos of Edison Chen and his starry sexual conquests, one woman here is reeling from a shocking discovery of her own.

Carol (not her real name) found out in the worst way possible that her husband had an affair: she stumbled on a series of sex tapes he made with his lover.

We cannot identify the couple for legal reasons.

One of the clips was of Carol's husband (far left) and his China 'bride' at a wedding feast with her parents.

'The video was quite long and there were so many scenes. I only saw a bit of it and I didn't want to see anymore,' said the 36-year-old self-employed woman, who found the tapes in their home.

'People were talking about the Edison Chen saga, but what about me? The tapes were of my own husband and another woman having sex,' she said.

There were several moments when she got teary and emotional during the interview at her four-room flat in the western part of Singapore.

Carol said that the tapes also revealed that her husband of nine years had what appeared to be a customary marriage with the woman in China, and that they have a home there.

Even worse, she suspects that he had a child with the woman - as there were clips of him carrying a boy and celebrating his birthday.

Her 39-year-old husband works in the electronics line and the couple have a four-year-old boy here.

She claims he was having at least two extra-marital affairs at the same time, the other one with a Singaporean.

She discovered the first one in October 2005. He had forgotten to take his handphone when he left for work one day. She searched through it and found several photos of him cosying up with another woman.

In one of them, they appeared to be in bed - their shoulders were bare and they were leaning against the headboard.

Another showed her kissing him on the cheek.

He only treats me well in public but...

When her husband returned home for his phone, she confronted him with the photos. He allegedly hit her on her face then, and they had a scuffle.

She suffered bruises on her forearm, wrist and scratches on her body.

She said her husband later told her the photos were doctored, and not real.

She let the matter rest as she did not want to give up on their marriage.

But he continued to give her excuses that he had to work late and travel for his work, she claimed.

Then, in March last year, she was going through his things in the study room when she discovered five video tapes and a spy camera device.

There were also videos taken of the woman carrying a little boy, and also clips of them holidaying together in a resort in Indonesia.

She then engaged a private investigator, who went through the tapes and saw that her husband had apparently gone through a customary marriage to the woman in China on 1 Apr 2004. He also helped track down the girlfriend here.

She said she also found two immigration stamps of a European country in his passport. She alleges the stamps are fake, and believes he used them to show her he had to travel there for work, when he was actually elsewhere.

Carol met her husband in polytechnic and they dated for about 11 years.

'He was my first love and I trusted him,' she said. 'A man who loves his wife wouldn't do all this.'

With the private investigator's help, she caught him with his Singapore girlfriend, late one night outside his office in March last year.

CONFRONTED HUBBY

She confronted them and once again, they had a scuffle. She said she got scratched and bruised on her arm and neck.

She claims her husband and his Singapore girlfriend had also taken her son out with them.

Carol said that when he was about three years old, the boy had told her: 'Daddy has a girl.'

And he drew the stick figure of a woman, in addition to his parents and himself, she said.

Still, she said: 'I wanted to save the marriage for my son.'

As recently as October last year, she paid for a Hong Kong Disneyland family holiday.

'He didn't even chip in. It cost me over $2,000.'

But it did not help bring them closer.

Then, she made more discoveries: she found four remittance receipts, dated between January and May 2004, for sums totalling over $3,000 sent to China, as well as a March 2001 receipt for a diamond bracelet costing $269.

The bracelet was not given to her, she said.

Early this year, she made police reports about her husband's alleged forgery of the passport stamps and that he had committed bigamy.

She also went to court and got a personal protection order against him. He has since moved out of their flat.

'I kept my word to be a good wife. But he just kept telling me lies,' she said.

'In public, he treats me very well. But when we are alone, it's totally different.'

She also fears for other women who may have fallen for her estranged husband's charms.

When asked why she only waited till this year to take action, she said: 'I waited so long for my son.'

'But this year is a new year,' said Carol, who is now filing for a divorce.

'I want to share my experience as a lesson for women out there, so that they will not suffer in silence like I did.'

This article was first published in The New Paper on Mar 8, 2008.