Centre highlights sex offenders’ rights

Fiji Women Crisis Centre feels that there are certain provisions within the Registration of the Sex Offenders Bill that need to be improved.

Representing the centre in its submission to the Justice, Law and Human Rights Parliamentarian Standing Committee last Thursday, Miliana Tarai said the reason why the bill needs to be relooked at was to ensure that the human rights of everyone involved was taken into account, including the sex offenders. Ms Tarai said there might be a need for sex offences to be categorised.

“This is because the Bill makes reporting an obligation of a life time,” she said.

“We are approaching our submission from a point that it would be depending on the severity of the different sexual offences.

“Classification of offences would better determine the registration to ensure that the human rights of everyone involved is being considered.”

She said that juveniles should not be registered as sexual offenders unless the court says otherwise.

“Because it will be for the court to decide whether what the offender has committed causes a threat to the society and has to be registered,’’ Ms Tarai said.

“But if they are of no risk to the society or to the children, then they should not be registered as offenders because it will spoil their life and their future.”

The second representative from the centre, Stephanie Dunn, highlighted the need of strengthening confidentiality of offenders’ personal details

She said revealing the identity of the offender would encourage one to take revenge because they would know where the offender stayed or worked.

“This is what we are trying to avoid,” she said.

Ms Dunn said a provision that prohibited the publication of offenders’ details on websites, internet or the media should also be in place.