‘Work together to prevent sexual crime cases involving children’

SHAH ALAM: Calls have intensified for sexual crimes involving children to be taken seriously and for the whole community to work together in helping young victims to overcome such traumatic incidents.

Speaking at the Convention to Protect Students from Sexual Exploitation, Dr Noor Raihan Kamal from the Health Ministry said victims who came to the clinic for sexual crime cases most of the time did not come directly claiming to be abused.

Noor Raihan said victims are usually first diagnosed with mental health issues and authorities only find out later that they are victims of sexual abuse after checking their history and background.

“At the Health Ministry, we have trained our medical officers, especially at the health clinic, to detect sexual abuse cases as those who came did not complain of abuse.

“Pain when peeing is one of the signs, followed by sexually transmitted diseases (STD) and teenage pregnancies. This is only detected at the health clinic and we have trained our officers to notice the signs,” she said.

Noor Raihan shared that the Health Ministry has actively collaborated with the Education Ministry to advocate for parents and teachers to detect sexual abuse cases among children.

According to the Bukit Aman’s Sexual, Women and Child Investigation Division’s (D11) principal assistant director ACP Siti Kamsiah Hassan, the public usually avoid making a report as they are always concerned about lack of evidence.

She said another concern is that victims of sexual abuse become too emotional once a police report is made.

“We will investigate once we observe any element of crime. The police will never collude with individuals or officers who refuse to accept any report. Our next procedure is to record a statement from the victim and also the witnesses for us to bring justice to the victim,” she said.

“So even during our investigation, we don’t wear uniforms. But on a normal day, if we go to the scene, we will take care of the trauma of that child or the victim’s family so that there is no speculation, because when it comes to sexual crime, it is a sensitive case.”

Meanwhile, Social Welfare Department deputy director general (Operations) Wan Noraidah Wan Mohd Zain said the Kasih Hotline 15999 is always available for those who want to lodge a report regarding abuse involving children.

Addressing concerns from teachers in reporting sexual cases involving students, she assured that they would not be held liable as stated under Section 116 of the Children Act 2001.

“Don’t feel scared to make a report as Section 116 of the Child Act 2001 assures protection to the informer who handed information to the authorities would not be held liable,” she said.

Wan Noraidah, however, said more efforts can be made to protect children.

“Last year, the government announced the establishment of the Children Development Department on Sept 1 last year that will empower prevention programmes.

“We started last year by starting the children’s protection advocacy programme, and we targeted doing it in 300 schools this year,” she said.

Law minister Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said said the feeling of reluctance in lodging reports of sexual cases involving children remained one of the main challenges to the policymakers.

The Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department said that survivors and others in the public are still worried that filing a report may instead backfire on them.

“The main challenge for us the policymakers together with the education minister and the teachers here today is when the people are scared to make a report,” she said while launching the Convention to Protect Students from Sexual Exploitation, on Saturday.

Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek encouraged teachers not to feel scared in making reports on sexual crimes as they would not get in trouble for doing so.

The Nibong Tebal MP further said that the government is committed to increasing more counselling teachers intake in schools.

Fadhlina said the initiative was not solely due to the sexual crime cases, but also for cases related to mental health and discipline issues among students.

“We have also added more counselling teachers for the special needs students. This is an ongoing initiative to get more counselling teachers as there is a very high need in a variety of cases including cases like this,” she added.