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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Tougher sex offence laws coming

by

Gail Alexander
1602 days ago
20210305
Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi responding to a question during Tuesday’s sitting of the Senate.

Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi responding to a question during Tuesday’s sitting of the Senate.

OFFICE OF THE PARLIAMENT

An avalanche of pro­posed law against sex­u­al ha­rass­ment—in the work­place, streets and via use of cy­ber­space—is com­ing.

Draft pep­per spray law is al­so com­plet­ed and ready for Cab­i­net next week, plus a note on reg­u­la­tion of pub­lic trans­port, in­clud­ing PH taxis, went to Cab­i­net yes­ter­day.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi con­firmed this to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day as In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day ap­proach­es next Mon­day.

Pro­posed pep­per spray leg­is­la­tion was be­ing fi­nalised in re­cent weeks af­ter it was an­nounced on Feb­ru­ary 11 that its use had been ap­proved. The an­nounce­ment came hours be­fore the fu­ner­al of mur­dered court clerk An­drea Bharatt.

Calls for tasers, pep­per spray and sim­i­lar pro­tec­tion arose since the mur­der of teenag­er Ashan­ti Ri­ley last No­vem­ber. The is­sue was be­ing ex­am­ined by Gov­ern­ment, which was con­cerned such im­ple­ments could be used by cul­prits on vic­tims. Po­lice had sup­port­ed calls for de­vices. Re­in­forced calls for such pro­tec­tion, in­clud­ing by in­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards, arose when Bharatt was mur­dered on Jan­u­ary 29.

Gov­ern­ment sub­se­quent­ly stat­ed that pep­per spray will be avail­able for trade on a reg­u­lat­ed for­mat with a per­mit.

The “We The Peo­ple” group and Ger­ald Aboud sub­se­quent­ly ex­pressed con­cern that ap­pli­ca­tion time might de­lay pro­tec­tion for peo­ple who re­al­ly need it.

Yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi said there will be a mod­i­fied per­mit process. He said he’s al­so near­ing com­ple­tion on a pack­age of amend­ments to deal with sex­u­al ha­rass­ment. These will be is­sued for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion be­fore be­ing fi­nalised for Par­lia­ment de­bate.

Some amend­ments will be­come part of the sex­u­al of­fences law which is cur­rent­ly silent on sex­u­al ha­rass­ment of­fences.

Amend­ments are al­so pro­posed for oth­er laws, in­clud­ing the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act, Bail Act and Com­put­er Mis­use Act.

Amend­ments will al­so in­volve a re­turn to at­tempts to es­tab­lish a Sex­u­al Of­fend­ers Reg­istry and wit­ness pro­tec­tion for peo­ple seek­ing to re­port mat­ters, in­clud­ing sex­u­al of­fences. Gov­ern­ment had failed with pre­vi­ous at­tempts on both is­sues.

While there is na­tion­al pol­i­cy against sex­u­al ha­rass­ment, Al-Rawi said the sex­u­al of­fences law lacks spe­cif­ic sex­u­al ha­rass­ment of­fences.

“The pack­age we pro­pose will cur­tail the need for peo­ple to ‘try their luck’ with such cas­es in the crim­i­nal, civ­il or In­dus­tri­al Court - it will con­sol­i­date and clar­i­fy process­es to deal with this,” the Ag said.

So­cial me­dia ha­rass­ment cov­ered

New of­fences be­ing cre­at­ed by the amend­ments cov­er sex­u­al ha­rass­ment in the work­place, on the street, when do­ing busi­ness and via in­ter­net sources, in­clud­ing so­cial me­dia and videos. It al­so cov­ers voyeurism and ex­tends to abuse of con­fi­dence in re­la­tion­ships.

Claus­es cov­er cat­e­gories in­clud­ing do­mes­tic and mi­grant work­ers

Al-Rawi added, “It’s very far-reach­ing, rev­o­lu­tion­ary, cut­ting edge aw which the UK, for in­stance, is now get­ting in­to. It cov­ers a wide spec­trum which peo­ple - par­tic­u­lar­ly women and girls - might be sub­ject to in pub­lic or pri­vate cir­cum­stances, in­clud­ing via chance en­counter.

“For in­stance, the as­pect of con­fi­dence in sex­u­al re­la­tion­ships could in­clude in­stances where a video of some­one hav­ing sex with an­oth­er per­son (in the con­fi­dence of a re­la­tion­ship) is cir­cu­lat­ed and this is done to em­bar­rass or threat­en them, ex­tort some­thing from them or sim­i­lar dam­ag­ing sit­u­a­tions. Those will be crim­i­nal of­fences. These sit­u­a­tions go to the heart of ha­rass­ment and is linked to sex­u­al ha­rass­ment.”

On the re­turn to es­tab­lish a Sex­u­al Of­fend­ers’ Reg­istry, Al-Rawi added, “Some stake­hold­ers pre­vi­ous­ly said we were go­ing too far too fast with the Sex­u­al Of­fend­ers’ Reg­istry and they want­ed to fo­cus on the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and re­cov­ery of of­fend­ers, rather than al­low­ing for trans­paren­cy for the pub­lic of hav­ing of­fend­ers’ names pub­lished in a reg­istry, but we’ll press on.”

And on the wit­ness pro­tec­tion amend­ment, he said, “We’ve main­tained a spe­cial place for law to pro­tect the vul­ner­a­ble but un­for­tu­nate­ly, the Op­po­si­tion op­posed many bills. UNC’s Sad­dam Ho­sein op­posed hav­ing anonymi­ty for wit­ness­es who might be afraid to come for­ward to get pro­tec­tion for them­selves and their fam­i­ly and seek jus­tice which this sys­tem could have helped fa­cil­i­tate.”

Al-Rawi added, “All of these amend­ments com­bined rep­re­sent things we couldn’t get done as the UNC didn’t sup­port it. We’ve re­turned to the draw­ing board and framed the law in a way that we can ass them af­ter seek­ing stake­hold­er views - and with­out UNC just op­pos­ing them and de­priv­ing the pub­lic of the ben­e­fit of pro­tec­tion.”

Amend­ments are pro­ject­ed to be passed by sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote – Gov­ern­ment votes alone if nec­es­sary.

There’s been con­sul­ta­tion on some as­pects but the Sex­u­al Of­fences and Ev­i­dence amend­ments re­quire pub­lic in­put, the AG said. The process should take a cou­ple months from his min­istry to Cab­i­net, then Par­lia­ment, de­pend­ing on ex­tent of stake­hold­er feed­back.

Al-Rawi al­so said Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan brought a note to Cab­i­net yes­ter­day on leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­late the pub­lic trans­port sys­tem, from PH and H cars to the PTSC and oth­er modes. That’s be­ing ex­am­ined by a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee.

Oth­er parts of the pack­age:

• ↓Amend­ment to the Bail Act re­gard­ing bail and sex­u­al of­fences and of­fend­er man­age­ment.

• ↓Amend­ment on whistle­blow­ing which will al­low threats of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment to be re­port­ed in a safe way with­out con­se­quences.

• ↓Amend­ment to the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act and Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act to treat with core is­sue of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment in work­places.

• ↓As­pects of the Cy­ber Crime Bill which can be used in sex­u­al ha­rass­ment mat­ters will be placed in the Com­put­er Mis­use Act.


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