admin
The sentencing of child rapists to do community service is a real mockery of the justice system which cannot be allowed to continue. Those who sleep with girls below the age of 16, which is the age of consent, are rapists and should be treated as such. Any girl below the age of 16 should be protected by the irrefutable presumption that she is incapable of consenting to sex.
What is obtaining now whereby child molesters are let off the hook by being asked to prove to the court that their victims were capable of consenting is not acceptable. What is disturbing is that most of the offenders are sentenced to community service or are fined yet the minimum sentence for a count of rape is 10 years.
Child rapists are being charged with a lesser offence of performing sexual intercourse or an indecent act on a young person. There is an urgent need for the legislature to re-visit the legislation on rape to ensure there is no ambiguity regarding the issue of consent. The legislation should not leave it to presiding magistrates or judges to decide whether or not a girl below the age of 16 consented or not. Those that decide to sleep with girls under the age of 16 should just be locked away for long periods.
The courts should stop forthwith sending sex predators to do community service at schools because doing so is exposing more children to the danger of being raped. In our view those convicted of offences of sleeping with girls below the age of 16 do not deserve community service but should be jailed.
Victims of rape are traumatised for the rest of their lives and the situation is even worse when the victim is a child. It therefore defies all logic that those who rape adults are imprisoned while those that rape children get away with a community service or a fine.
What should be appreciated is that rapists of children are in fact sentencing their victims to death as most of them infect them with HIV/Aids. Hardly a day passes without reports of children being raped, some of them by their own fathers. It seems the courts are not passing deterrent sentences against child rapists hence the upsurge in cases of children being raped.
Most of the rapists continue to enjoy freedom after being sentenced to do community service because the courts are charging them with a lesser offence of having sexual intercourse with a young person. What boggles the mind is that the courts are convinced that a girl aged 13 years for example can consent to sex.
We totally agree with many parents that the attitude of magistrates and judges to sexual offences against children leaves a lot to be desired. Instead of incarcerating these child molesters, many magistrates and judges go out of their way to find an excuse to reduce the rape to a lesser charge in order to justify the ridiculous sentence of community service. These child killers, as already alluded to, should be removed from society for very long periods.
It is our fervent hope that the legislature will, without delay, re-visit the legislation on rape with a view to addressing the shortcomings which have seen child molesters getting away with murder.
Online Reporter