Should sex registry be made public?

Following the high prevalence of violence against women and children in August, the question over whether the sexual offenders registry should be open to the public has been brought to the fore.

Social movement amandla. mobi has petitioned Justice Minister Ronald Lamola to “make the sex offenders list publicly accessible online and on mobile platforms that anyone can easily access”.

The petition was created 18 days ago with the goal of garnering 8 000 signatures. So far, the organisation has collected more than 7 840 signatures.

This followed a series of protests under the hashtag #AmINext, after the tragic deaths of young women in South Africa, including Sinethemba Ndlovu, Uyinene Mrwetyana, Leighandre Jegels, Meghan Cremer and Ayakha Jiyane and her three siblings – all acts of gender-based violence.

The National Register for Sexual Offenders (NRSO) – established through an Act of Parliament in 2007 – details a list of persons convicted of sexual offences against children and mentally disabled people.

The list is open to various institutions such as schools, creches, hospitals and employers in the private sector to ensure that a person who is not fit, is not hired to work with children and the mentally disabled.

According to department of justice spokesperson Chrispin Phiri, the list is updated as soon as a person is convicted of a sexual offence against a minor or mentally disabled person and the duration period is the same length as the imposed sentence.

The NRSO is not open to members of the public and remains confidential at this stage.

It is also a criminal offence to have any unauthorised disclosure or publication of contents in the register.

Legal expert advocate Deon Pool was of the view opening the register to the public would be a “recipe for disaster”.

“To put that in the public domain will create a platform for witch hunts, which is not the purpose of the sexual offences register,” he said.

“I do not think any good can come from it being made open to the public at the click of a button,” he explained.

Pool added it was not in the interests of justice to create witch hunts, but rather the better solution would be to extend the scope of people who accessed it.

This could include persons who get consent from the offender, for example.

Phiri said the power to make the register public did not only lie in the hands of the minister.

“The minister is looking at the Sexual Offences Act through a victimcentric approach and overhauling it in its entirety,” Phiri added. – News24 Wire