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PROSECUTOR General Johannes Tomana is every abused child’s avenger. The Constitution gives the Prosecutor General’s office, along with the police, sweeping authority to hunt down and put away the scum of our society — and they don’t come as evil as child molesters. Tomana’s prosecutors around the country, as well as the police, play God with whether the perpetrator is brought to account, or goes free – to commit more crimes.
Corruption has set in, with some child sex predators slipping through the dragnet after paying for their freedom at the police station or the prosecutor’s office. These corrupt public officials are a small, greedy and treacherous cabal that is clogging the justice system in which Tomana and his prosecutors are a vital cog.
A sexually-abused child, after the family comforting and predictable outrage, has nowhere to turn but the Prosecutor General’s office. When victims of sex abuse report to the police they, at the very least, expect empathy and a total commitment that the full resources at the disposal of law enforcement and prosecuting authorities, not least their professional ability, would be brought to bear.
But this contract between the child and the Prosecutor General’s office was shattered in serious ways when, yesterday — in the wake of concerns about how the courts are letting sex fiends go scot-free — Prosecutor General Johannes Tomana appeared to make excuses for child sex predators.
Correctly observing that the age of consent is 16, Tomana – disappointingly — veered off to try and put up a defence for paedophiles.
According to Tomana, society cannot reasonably ask girls between 12 and 16 to hold back from sexual activity when they are poor and idle.
“We’ve nine-year-olds, 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds who’re actually not in school, who’re not doing anything for example. What are we saying to them? We say you can’t even do this [have sex], when the environment is not giving them alternative engagements? What are we talking about?,” Tomana told The Chronicle in an interview.
He went further: “It’s assumed that the girl child’s independent decisions start at an age that those that are speaking want to fix, but if you go out there you’ll find out that some of them may want to start out in life early.”
Coming in the same week that an official report showed a staggering 40 percent of our girls are being married off below the age of 18, the Prosecutor General’s utterances were not only shocking, but also debilitating to any parent.
As former education minister David Coltart correctly observed, “Tomana’s comments show that the girl child can expect very little sympathy in our prosecutorial system and predatory men the opposite.”
Tomana was not done. A man of books, we still can’t wrap our heads around what he meant when he said: “I want to say that’s the reason why the law that we’ve at the moment recognises that they’re actually an adult [girls below 16 but above 12], they can make a decision, and they can make a real conscious decision about what they want about their own life . . .”
It would appear to us that Tomana, having correctly noted that children below 16 are under the age of consent, went on to repudiate everything he had said in that factual observation.
Not only that, he believes child marriages CAN be justified.
“In some cases, if you talk to our prosecutors, the experience is that you find that she would actually demonstrate to you that you’re destroying their life and demand you let that guy go because it’s her own will, she wants to get married to that person,” Tomana said.
“You’ll also find out that person also wants to get married to the girl. Is it not better to allow them to get married than send this one to jail after she has already been violated, for example, and send her back to society that would not actually look at her as a pure person anymore. Is that better?”
What is the Prosecutor General saying? Prosecutors are cutting deals with child sex predators who promise to marry their victims? How twisted is that?
Alarming of all, Tomana wants Zimbabweans to LET THE CHILDREN DECIDE.
“It’s assumed that the girl child’s independent decisions start at an age that those that are speaking want to fix … I want you to do an exercise to ask the girl child who is in that age group who decides to do that [have sex], in order to address the real issues,” he fumes.
This, coming from our most senior prosecutor, must get us all worried. Society makes rules for our existence on earth to be comfortable. Society has deemed that thieving is bad, for instance. It’s illegal, and Tomana or anyone in his position must prosecute all thieves. Equally, our Parliament has set the age of consent at 16, and decided that child marriages are wrong, sex with children is despicable and imposed a duty on the Prosecutor General to pursue anyone who falls foul of the law.
We thought this was straight-forward. But our top prosecutor appears to take a different view. He is now behaving like an Excuse General for paedophiles and all others who find a sickening kind of pleasure in having sex with children. When a pot-bellied married man, possibly HIV-positive, bribes a child from a poor family with “Jiggies” or sweets, and she “consents” to sleep with him, that’s good enough a defence.
Only the sick find pleasure in child sex, and they belong in jail not schools where they are currently being sent to perform community service, at the real risk of abusing more of our children.
Can we really say children should decide what’s good for them, and make legislation out of their wishes? If we did, Spiderman would be President and Snowman the Prosecutor General.
We don’t let children drive, work, vote or travel unaccompanied for a reason: because they are children.
As Professor Jonathan Moyo says elsewhere in this paper, “How can a kid who can’t drive a car have a sex drive? The bottom line is that children can’t consent to any sex whatsoever.”
Parents up and down the country expect the Prosecutor General to accept that and commit to protect their children, not jump in and glide on this slippery slope towards legalising sex with children.
Online Reporter