Earlier this month, a man in Singapore was sentenced to 28 years’ jail for raping his stepdaughter repeatedly over six years.
However, he cannot be caned because he is over 50 years old.
Addressing the alarming rise in such cases, President Halimah Yacob recently stated that it is “timely” to review the caning law for sexual offenders.
Source: Halimah Yacob on Facebook
She said that rapists should not be able to avoid the cane just because of their age.
“It’s our duty to protect our young and we must not fail them,” she declared.
In a Facebook post on Monday (19 Dec), Madam Halimah expressed her concerns over the recent spate of cases involving children being sexually assaulted by male relatives in their own homes.
Source: Halimah Yacob on Facebook
Calling it “highly disturbing and sickening”, she added that children should be better protected from sexual predators.
She also emphasised that while severe punishments for offenders are important, they’re insufficient on their own.
Thus, there needs to be other ways to help the children and prevent them from falling prey to rapists.
“I worry that there could be many more unreported cases,” she said. “I can’t even begin to imagine how much pain and damage these young victims had to suffer.”
According to Singapore Legal Advice, only males under the age of 50 can be caned.
However, Madam Halimah pointed out that it’s “timely” to review this law.
It’s ironic that they could escape from the pain caused by caning despite the lifetime of severe trauma and irreparable damage that they cruelly inflicted on their victims which will last a lifetime.
Thus, even offenders who are over 50 years old should not get to avoid the punishment of caning.
Madam Halimah also noted that some rapes that were committed earlier were only reported after the offender had turned 50.
“The reported cases follow a certain pattern,” Madam Halimah wrote.
First, the victims are groomed from an early age by the sexual predators, who could be their father, stepfather, or other male relative.
As a result, the victims may believe that the acts committed against them are “normal”.
Many of them only realise that these behaviours are wrong when they attend sex education classes far later in school.
“The sex predators had preyed on their innocence to persuade the victims that the perversion was alright.”
Furthermore, some victims were hesitant to report the sexual assaults. This was because they were afraid to break up their families or face the possibility of losing the sole breadwinner.
Others were pressured and intimidated into silence, Madam Halimah added.
“Imagine the terror and vulnerability of a child stuck in a home that’s supposed to be a sanctuary but became a living hell instead,” she said.
Madam Halimah also acknowledged organisations such as PAVE, which address issues of domestic violence.
I hope that together with the relevant government agencies they could look at ways to better protect our children from sexual abuses in the home.
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Featured image adapted from Halimah Yacob on Facebook.
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