It’s not ‘case closed’ yet for sexual offenders |22 April 2020

The press conference yesterday: (l to r) Mr Matombe, police sergeant Simeon, AG Ally and PS William-Melanie (Photo: Jude Morel)

Depending on additional information and complainants who come forward, the police will look into furthering its investigations in regards to the three offenders who recently pleaded guilty and were sentenced on sexual offences’ charges committed against children.

This was noted during a press conference yesterday with Attorney General Frank Ally, principal secretary for social affairs Linda William-Melanie, police sergeant Davis Simeon and chief executive of the National Council for Children (NCC) Jean-Claude Matombe.

Mr Simeon revealed that approximately 200 victims were contacted by the offenders of which 75 were requested to send indecent photos and around 14 were sexually abused by the offenders.

He noted that there might be more who are afraid to come forward.

On his part the attorney general described the number of sexual abuse cases in Seychelles as alarming.

Mr Ally stated that there are about 90 cases that his office is either considering for prosecution or have already brought before the court.

He added that “there are many abuse cases in the country involving children and adults as victims. We also have sexual assault cases among children”.

It is a crime to engage in sexual practices with a child younger than 15, even if the child in question gives consent.

In relations to the sexual offence case in question, Mr Ally explained that the public was only informed about it after the sentencing due to a gag order imposed by the court to protect the proceedings and the victims, and to avoid any interference and prejudice.

The office of the attorney general and other authorities started dealing with the case in mid-2019.

He further explained that the reason why the identities of the child abusers are not revealed is so as to protect the victims, who live in fear of being identified, judged and stigmatised.

“One of the promises we made to the victims was that we will protect them. We are protecting their identities to ensure that they are not stigmatised and if we were to reveal the identities of the offenders, we would make it much easier for people to identify the victims.”

“These [the victims] are young people who deserve our utmost protection,” Mr Ally underscored.

This was reiterated by PS William-Melanie who noted that public curiosity should not supersede the importance of protecting the young victims.

“Rather than trying to find out the name of these abusers, it is more important for our population to understand that what happened to these children should never have taken place and we must work together to protect our children,” the principal secretary stated.

“For us to overcome the challenges related to child abuse, we need the cooperation of everyone – from parents to educators and anyone else concerned in protecting children.”

The names of the abusers do appear on the country’s sexual offender’s register which is kept and safeguarded by social services at the Ministry of Family Affairs and not available in public domain.

However due to the court’s stance to not reveal the abusers, many have taken upon themselves to post photos of persons they believe are the offenders on social media. This has led to several false accusations and tarnished the reputation of those falsely accused.

The attorney general highlighted that a lot of people might be taken to task and charged for accusing the wrong persons.

On his side, Mr Matombe noted that NCC initiated a ‘Safe Technology’ campaign way back in October 2007 to tackle issues such as sexting, sharing of nude photos among youngsters and cyberbullying.

He explained that the campaign waned after a while and NCC attempted to revive it in 2018, although it did not receive much engagement from the private sector.

“We need to revise our laws because some of them have not necessarily been updated to take into account recent developments. IT is a domain which develops so fast and we need to keep up with its evolution so that we do not get similar cases.”

Mr Matombe also asked parents to find ways to better engage with their children to encourage the latter to be more open and trust their parents.

“Over 100 children are involved in this case and our culture has made it so that they did not feel safe enough to tell their parents or go to the authorities,” he noted.

The relevant authorities have been tasked with reviewing and improving on the structures and laws regarding child protection to ensure that children are safe from abuse.

Elsie Pointe