YOURSAY | ‘An underaged person’s consent is not valid.’
K’tan cops want girls in ‘consensual’ statutory rape cases charged too
Hassan: Statutory rape means the girl is underage, that is, under the age of consent. If she is under the age of consent, how can she give consent and have it be valid?
In Kelantan, these rapes happen to girls as young as 10 years old or younger because the rapist gave her ice cream or a motorbike ride.
Do you think a girl that age has the maturity and understanding to give informed consent to sex?
Furthermore, most of these statutory rape cases are reported by the girl or her parents.
When you charge the victim, you are discouraging them from reporting rape. So who is going to report?
Or is this an attempt to reduce the high number of rape cases in Kelantan by discouraging reporting?
Presumably, this will apply to non-Muslim girls too.
Hmmm: The law states very clearly that children under the age of 16 cannot give consent to sex. So, even if they say yes, the law says no.
This is to deter adults from taking advantage of impressionable children to lure them into sex. If minors are also to be charged, there will be virtually no more reported cases.
The adults will definitely claim that there was consent and they can even threaten the minors that they will also be charged if they report it.
Let us stop muddying the law. Sex with minors is a crime and there is no need for the police to even check if the minor consented.
This is the case even if the minor is a male. So it is not true to say that the law is biased towards charging males.
LimPanther5220: Kelantan police chief Yusoff Mamat said that if the law allows action to be taken against both parties, statutory rape cases like this can be curbed.
This is thoroughly unacceptable for a person occupying a high position in the state.
If men involved in statutory rape cases have been charged and this does not prevent such cases from continuing, how is action taken against both parties going to curb such cases?
If action against fully grown thinking adults cannot stop the problem, will action against naive people stop the problem?
If young underage girls are to be charged and punished, why not also punish those religious teachers in Kelantan who fail in their duty of instilling good behaviour and righteous religious values in the flock under them?
Cyclonus: Yusoff should know that minors who are socially immature are easily enticed by words and promises. It’s not as though these minors could force themselves onto unwilling victims.
These young impressionable girls need society’s protection, not villification.
But, this Kelantan police chief who is suppose to be the protector of the weak and innocent, decided to go beyond his boundary to persecute them instead.
We can probably look towards this kind of justice if a certain political party comes into power.
Oct: This is the problem when there are two sets of laws.
One says that it is statutory rape when the victim is younger than 18, whereas the other says that as long as the offender marries the victim, then no offence is committed.
However, there is no protection for the victim when the victim is divorced later without any compensation from the offender. It is so easy for the offender to divorce via sms or WhatsApp messages.
It is known that both sets of law exist, and no way one set can intrude and question the decision of the other.
There will always be ambiguity as long as there are two sets of laws. Punishing the victim of a sexual offence is not the answer to underage sex.
It is better to correct the abnormality, but that is a mountain too high to climb.
The above is a selection of comments posted by Malaysiakini subscribers. Only paying subscribers can post comments. In the past year, Malaysiakinians have posted over 100,000 comments. Join the Malaysiakini community and help set the news agenda. Subscribe now.
These comments are compiled to reflect the views of Malaysiakini subscribers on matters of public interest. Malaysiakini does not intend to represent these views as fact.
