KOTA KINABALU: He allegedly had sex with a 13-year-old girl and saw no wrong in it.Riduan Masmud, the 40-year-old who shocked the nation after being charged with raping the minor and later declared that he had married her in the midst of the case, has opened up for the first time on why he decided to take the girl as his second wife.
The restaurant manager defended his action, saying it was a case of suka sama suka (mutual consent), adding that it was acceptable under Syariah law.
I am not sure what is your stand on this matter, but I'm going to say what I think about this.
Firstly bear in mind the main issue that this man is charged with rape, whether it is by force or statutory (consent on underage). Therefore this man would still have to answer to the charges put on him regardless of his claim of marrying the girl eventually.
Why should this man escape justice?
I believe that one must realize the severity of a crime like statutory rape and to be honest, the only reason why this person is "marrying" the girl is to escape from being prosecuted with the full extent of the law for rape. People fail to realize that there is a growing concern on cases like this in Malaysia and it would not help anyone if this would be just "swept under the carpet" because of his claims.
In the past, I have written that we are currently facing a problem in our society where the ethics behind sex no longer exist within the accepted boundaries of our society and to this extend, child sex offenders thrive on an environment that they feel they can get away from. Today we live in an environment where sex offenders like this would be able to exploit the loopholes of law to thrive in their activities.
With that and this case in mind, what are we telling the community?
[Statutory Sex Offenders let off on "good behavior bonds"]
Are we telling them that rape is ok just as long as you take "necessary actions" afterwards? Are we telling the community that its ok for men to have sex with 12 to 13 year old girls just as long as you know what you need to do afterwards?
Personally I believe that if there is no excuse to condone rape by law, then the same should be done for people convicted of statutory rape. If we do not take a hard stand against crimes like this, we will be facing more atrocious crimes against underage girls and we would even reach to a point where we would no longer have a solution to stop this from happening in the community.
Charge the man. Let see if he still feels the same way after serving time for what he has done.
You know what angers me most about this debacle? There are some who actually has the nerves to defend this guy by saying his conducts were technically HALAL by religious laws so striking off the charge is justifiable.
ReplyDeleteErr how about no? How can this kind of circumvention be justifiable? Need we remind them that this is a CRIMINAL conduct and we've got penal codes to guard against such breaches. The law of stat rape is there to protect minors, not enrich wrongdoers. The very essence of stat rape law is to annul a minor's consent, so spinning around the fact that "the girl had consented what so no big deal lah" is not doing the rule of law any justice.