More (f )laws
It has been pointed out time and time again that the recent pattern of law-drafting by the Government without consulting relevant stakeholders or ignoring their advice is woefully inept, to say the least. It is like a tyre factory continuously rolling our square tyres rather than reflecting a considered process of reforming existing laws or enacting new laws.
This is all the more problematic in a country which lacks judicial review of enacted law.
The latest bombshell was amendments proposed to the Penal Code by the Ministry of Justice in regard to several aspects of the offence of statutory rape. While making the offence of statutory rape gender neutral in nature is welcome, other proposed changes have resulted in a storm of criticism from activists and professionals and left ordinary citizens aghast.
Primarily, their concern was over reducing the age of consent in regard to statutory rape from 16 years to 14 years. They maintain that this will have the effect of overturning progressive penal law reforms in 1995 intended to protect young girls not having the ability to give informed consent in regard to coerced non-marital sexual relationships. On their part, those advocating the return of the law to a pre-1995 level have not been able to justify their position except to point to the ‘practical realities of teenage relationships’ and the ‘unfair’ stigmatization of young men.
This has been aggravated by the fact that the Justice Ministryled amendments which have been in the pipeline for some time, have proposed that if there is evidence that rape as already defined in the Code had been with the consent of the victim, a court may have the discretion to impose a suspended sentence. Taken in tandem, these proposed amendments seem to point to the Ministry taking a very liberal view of sexual behaviour among adolescents and practical aspects involving statutory rape.
The concern that the Ministry professes for young men caught up in convictions of statutory rape is moreover not reflected in reality. Sri Lanka’s legal system documents an abysmal number of investigations and convictions in regard to statutory rape where victims often protest that their complaints are not properly investigated by the police. Legendary delays in the court process in regard to cases of sexual violence are another factor.
Our news reports that these controversial amendments have now been withdrawn and will go back to the drawing board. Without addressing these gaps in the process, was this a short cut which was to lead to more injustice for victims of statutory rape? Where then is the protection for young adolescents?