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Tightening the screws on sex offences

Apr 27, 2010 Editorial

The Sexual Offences Bill has been passed in the National Assembly and it would seem that the only thing between the Bill and the law is its assent.
For its part, the Bill is one of the most comprehensive pieces of legislation; it modifies the old concept of sexual assault; it also increases the penalties. Assenting to this Bill is not the domain of President Bharrat Jagdeo.
The Bill states that the Act shall come into operation on such date as the Minister, in this case, Minister Priya Manickchand, orders or appoints different dates for different provisions.
The fact that the government was pushed to introduce this Bill would suggest that sexual offences have reached proportions that are indeed worrying.
Scarcely a day goes by without the press reporting on one sexual assault or another. This past week there was a report of a father having sex with his daughter and infecting her with HIV.
Rape has been expanded. Up until this Bill, rape was confined to the physical penetration by a man to a woman.
Today, “penetration means any intrusion, however slight and for however short a period, of any part of a person’s body or of any object into the vagina or anus of another person, and any contact, however slight and for however short a period between the mouth of one person and the genitals or anus of another, including but not limited to sexual intercourse” and the gamut of sexual activities.
The penalty for rape is life imprisonment; for sexual assault, on summary conviction, five years and ten years on indictment. But what seems to be prevalent in Guyana is child sex.
Four years ago, Guyana had cause to modify the age of consent. It was at one time 13, based on certain practices in keeping with religious traditions.
The age of consent in now 16 but the courts are replete with instances of men having sex with girls, some as young as 12. On conviction the penalty is life imprisonment. We have had cases in the past of the court imposing sentences that lawyers found too harsh. These lawyers often appealed on the grounds of severity of sentence. Such options have been limited.
But we must examine this fascination with child sex. There are those adults who swear that having sex with young people actually enhances their lives.
Some believe that the act makes them look younger and keeps their bodies in shape. We have actually heard people saying that the older person draws the youth of the young person.
This, then, must be the cause of older men going after young and younger children. The damage to the young children is never considered by these people. They are the predators who never stop. They are the people who insist that they need the children because in them rests cures for various ailments.
We have heard the ridiculous claims of young virgins curing some deadly ailments; we have heard claims for at least one man who must be sick to the core that a four-year-old invited him to molest her. He has not yet been charged although there is overwhelming evidence.
The Bill also reverses the old situation where women were incapable of rape. Some years back, four women abducted another and had their way with her in a house. The law as it stood prevented the authorities from charging the four with rape which was defined as the penetration of a vagina by a man.
The new law is draconian by any measure. It states that the slightest contact between genitals or any part of a body with the genital or anus of another could constitute penetration for the purpose of rape. And defence can in no way be that the person enjoyed the act.

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