Lee (seated seventh left) with the participants and organisers. He is flanked by OUM vice-president (academic) Professor Dr Shaari A Hamid (left) and OUM director Abdullah Borda.
KUCHING: The Malaysia Crime Prevention Foundation has called for the introduction of an anti-grooming law to empower law enforcement agencies to detect and nab perpetrators before actual sexual exploitation occurs.
Foundation senior vice-chairman Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye said the new law should clearly define all sexual crimes, including intended sexual abuse, and that a sexual predator should be charged even if he or she has yet to harm the victim.
He said relevant authorities and agencies such as the police as well as Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) would need to coordinate when drafting the law.
Lee said Malaysia could learn from the experience of Western countries in introducing effective laws to deal with child grooming, and the police should be well-trained to spot possible child groomers, especially those doing so online.
“We hope the anti-grooming law will be brought up in the next Parliamentary sitting because it is time to act. There are paedophiles walking among us. The recent case of a British paedophile, Richard Huckle, who is now behind bars in the United Kingdom, has sent shivers down the spines of Malaysians,” he told reporters after speaking on the ‘Importance and Significance of Lifelong Learning’ and ‘Etiquette and Social Media’ yesterday.
Huckle was arrested by Britain’s National Crime Agency after a tip-off from Australian Police and convicted of 71 counts of serious sexual assaults against children aged six months to 12 years while posing as a teacher, photographer and devout Christian in Malaysia.
Lee said child sexual grooming involves a paedophile who befriends and establishes an emotional connection with a child for sexual abuse such as over the Internet with the paedophile arranging to meet the child in person or an online friendship turning into pornography or sex trafficking.
Meanwhile, Open University Malaysia (OUM) aims to make online learning an integral component of higher education and lifelong learning, in line with the government effort to implement the use of technology for greater access to education.
Lee said at 67 per cent, Malaysia has the seventh highest Internet penetration rate across Asia, which puts the country in a good position to harness the power of online learning.
On etiquette when using social media, Lee said statistics from MCMC revealed that last year 16.8 million Malaysians were active on social media.
He said there were incidences where social media was used to convey information that promotes racism or for hate groups to recruit or promote propaganda online, as well as for cyber bullying, which causes emotional trauma and sometimes could even lead to suicide.
“It is my hope that society will use social media to their advantage to seek truths, enhance knowledge and be responsible members of society,” he said.