Dear Editor,
I thank the Minister of Human Services for her response to my letter re the Sexual Offences Act (SOA) 2012 (‘Amended Sexual Offences Bill will be ready after the parliamentary recess,’ SN, August 19); however, questions about the lack of implementation of the SOA for the past two years remains unanswered.
These are questions that the Ministers of Human Services both past and present as well as members of then parliamentary select committee of the SOA need to answer. Why is it that within the 9 months of select committee deliberations the possibility of a constitutional challenge to the SOA’s paper committals resulting in the recent Chief Justice’s ruling went undetected.
I am neither a lawyer nor a parliamentarian, but as a lay person, there is something mind boggling about the statement of the Minister that it was only after the Act was passed and consultations hosted by the government, the need for amendments to the Sexual Offences Act was recognized. Surely this should have been the responsibility of the select committee. This begs the question about the competency of the select committee and the consultative process that was used during the 9 months that they deliberated. But even if this was so, why has it taken more than 2 years to have these draft amendments sent to the AG Chambers. This is not an issue about property or land or rent, this is about rape, incest and violent brutalization of human beings, the majority of whom are children and women and who bear not only the physical but also the psychological scars of these crimes perpetrated against them, some of which never fully heal. While I am in complete support of paper committals, having spent countless hours in and out of magistrate’s courts myself giving court support to survivors of sexual offences, the majority of whom were children and their families, and know first hand the failure of the old SOA to deliver justice, a debate now on this must be of little comfort to the countless victims of sexual offences and their families who have been living in limbo, many of them seeing and knowing that their rapists, predators, sexual offenders and paedophiles are free out on bail while they wait for justice and their day in court.
The SOA so far has failed to deliver justice to sexual offence survivors. This delay would have already resulted in the withdrawal of some sexual offences cases, one of the compelling reasons for the implementation of a new SOA, and highlighting the fact that justice delayed is justice denied. And how long should the citizens of Guyana, stakeholders in the preventions and prosecution of sexual offences and victims and victims – to – be of sexual offences’ and their families, have to wait on representatives to be named before the SOA task force is convened and delivers on its obligations as laid out in the SOA?
Is two years not enough time?
Yours faithfully,
Danuta Radzik
