Malaysia is still lacking of a mandate for zero tolerance to tackle the child sexual abuse issues at the grass root level, said Founding Director of Protect and Save The Children (P.S. The Children) Madeleine Yong.
Yong pointed out that there is a need for specialist as enforcement or a new approach is taken by the government to tackle the matter in a comprehensive way.
“This is still happening because there isn’t a mandate for zero tolerance to child sexual abuse. We need specialist as enforcement. Prevention programme needs to be systematic and nationwide,” she told The ASEAN Post.
“We have wonderful policies but implementation and enforcement in the grassroots level need to totally improve,” Yong added.
A local daily, The Star reported that a unit trust agent was charged with 599 counts of sodomising his teenage daughter, one count of rape and 30 counts of committing physical sexual assault without intercourse on the girl since she was 13.
However, only 150 of the sodomy charges could be read out to the 36-year divorcee at the special court for sexual crimes against children here.
The government should look into the child protection policy that has been implemented by the many organisations that work with children, shelter homes, kindergartens, child care centres, camps for children.
For example, P.S. The Children is creating a child protection ecosystem to create safer communities who will listen to children’s cries, know how to something about it in the best interest of children.