S of the Law

The Malaysian Insider - The hypocrisy around consent to sex by children - Ravinder Singh

The Malaysian Insider - Guan Eng: Review rape laws, make impact statements mandatory

Free Malaysia Today - Parliament, statutory rape and children lying?

Malaysiakini - Judge's 'women exaggerate sexual act' remark slammed

Four articles above continue with views on Malaysians' utter disgust with our judiciary in their bizarre judgements on adults having sex with children, with ages raging from 13 down to about 5, the latter being in a kindergarten.

Initially I thought of using the idiom 'House of cards' to describe the Appeals Court's judgement (in the first case involving the bowler with the bright future). The idiom basically means a judgement/decision which was badly put together and easily knocked down.

Then there was the word 'dominoes' as in 'The Domino Theory', a term frequently mentioned during The Cold War to suggest that once a nation, say, Vietnam, had fallen like a domino to communism, that fallen domino would result in the consequential fall to communism of other neighbouring 'domino' nations, like Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, etc.   

But somehow I feel both won't adequately describe what I believe to be sorry case regarding the recent spate of statutory rapes that slipped through our remarkable judiciary net - jaring dah bocor liao lah, pordah!

IMHO, the monumental fc*k-up started with the Appeal Court's decision not to jail Noor Afizal Azizan. but to allow him to be merely fined a trifling sum and release on a bond.

Mind, some would argue the Malaysian history of this class of rapists began much much earlier. One could also claim the consequences in those days were worse, though not/never for the alleged rapist, but for the person who conscientiously complained about the authority not doing anything about the statutory rape other than detaining the alleged victim.

In the predictable end, the alleged rapist got away and was even honoured while the man who sought his conviction was unjustly convicted, an eternal black mark on the PM of that time. The rot in our judicial system became evident then, and it continues till today.

Once the court decided not to jail Noor Afizal even though he was found guilty of statutory rape, that judgement became a precedent. Bearing in mind it was set by the Appeals Court, the subordinate courts just fell into line.

Okay, so perhaps 'fall into line' would be the appropriate idiom, bearing in mind that its term 'fall into' does not mean jatuh dalam but 'to conform'.

We can even argue that Noor Afizal could be considered the saviour of the other two.

Yes, those amazing judges helped as well with their bloody screw-ball judgements and creativity in bringing to bear on their respective cases new laws hitherto unheard of, like the concept of 'consensual sex' in statutory rapes. They also showed more concerns for the perpetrators than the victims.

Perhaps they can join the ranks of some Catholic priests like the 'Most Reverent' (wakakaka) Benedict Groeschel of of the conservative Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, New York who stated, just about 10 days ago, that priests accused of child sex abuse had often been seduced by their accusers and that a first-time offender should not go to jail.

Catholic priest Benedict Groeschel

He said: 'People have this picture in their minds of a person planning to [be] a psychopath.

'But that’s not the case. Suppose you have a man having a nervous breakdown, and a youngster comes after him. A lot of the cases, the youngster is the seducer.'

For thousands of years many people of his profession (of all religions) had/have fc*ked up (in some cases, literally) laypeople in many lands.

As a priest he is considered by the faithful as a spiritual judge, but do you think he could qualify as a secular judge of the law, wakakaka?