When silence is not golden

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Minister warns that those who fail to report incest can be prosecuted

Dato Sri Fatimah Abdullah

KUCHING: Those who know of any case of incest are bound by the law to report to the nearest police station immediately or face prosecution.

Minister of Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Dato Sri Fatimah Abdullah warned that failure to give information on the commission of the crime or the intention of any person to commit sexual offences against children is breaking the law under the Sexual Offences Against Children Act, 2017.

She noted that under Section 19 of the Act, any person who fails to give information on the commission of or the intent of any other person to commit any offence under the Act, or any offence specified in the Schedule where the victim is a child, to the police, is committing an offence and shall on conviction be liable to a fine not exceeding RM5,000.

“I call on any person who has information about the heinous act to come forward and report the matter to the police immediately.

“The cooperation of the community, including parents, is very much needed to reduce the number of incest cases in the state.

“On top of that, we do not want to see the victim suffering alone if there is no action taken against the culprit,” she told reporters after chairing the Women and Family Council meeting here yesterday.

Fatimah lamented that the number of incest cases in Sarawak this year had increased to 15 up to this month from 13 cases recorded last year. She said nine of the cases had been solved while the rest are in the legal process.

“We must take cognition of the fact that the cases that are reported have been acted on swiftly by the police. We congratulate the police who had succeeded in making arrests on the day itself when the report was lodged.

“In most cases, charges were made against the accused person even before the remand period ended,” she said.

Fatimah hoped the swift action taken by the police and stiff sentence given by the court would help to reduce the number of incest cases in Sarawak.

“Of course, we all realise that there are cases that went unreported because of certain reasons – either they were not aware or they did not know how to report.

“But that will change our stand. Incest is a very serious heinous crime that should not happen, and we all should tackle it together seriously,” she said.

Statistics showed that in 2016, three cases were committed by fathers, three by step fathers, one by the grandfather, one by the brother, four by uncles and one by brother-in-law while in 2017, eight cases were committed by fathers, two by step fathers, three by grandfathers, two by brothers and four by uncles.

In 2016, one of the suspects was 17 years old and another was 64 years old while in 2017 a suspect was 19 years old and another was 59 years old.

In 2016, the youngest victim was three years old and the oldest was 19 years old while in 2017 the youngest was eight and oldest was 19.