We had a very famous Malaysian return home last week. So famous he was given access to an alternate exit upon arriving at KLIA. I suppose having to walk out through the main doors at the arrival terminal might have been a tad awkward for Selva Kumar Subbiah.
The sort of questions that media generally jostle to ask a convicted serial rapist are not ones that are quite so easily answered. Jet lag is bad enough without also being expected to talk about drugging and sexually assaulting multiple women. That would just be inconsiderate and totally go against the Malaysian spirit of being kind and thoughtful, especially towards convicted sex offenders.
Remember how understanding we were of Nur Fitri Azmeer Nordin, when the former Mara scholar and convicted paedophile returned home after serving his sentence in the United Kingdom?
Upon his release from prison Nur Fitri quietly slipped back into the country and simply carried on with life. His offences were even likened to skipping school by a Mara council member, who questioned why Nur Fitri could not be given a second chance like students who played truant.
How one can fail to agree, with such a compelling comparison, is truly beyond me. It really was quite unreasonable of some to refuse equating the possession of 30,000 pornographic images and videos of children, including abuse involving penetrative sexual activity, with skipping school. Both are clearly of equal measure.
Being a genius or an athlete helps
In any case, Nur Fitri should be given multiple chances despite his crimes, because he more than makes up for it by being a genius.
Surely it would be terribly myopic of us to curb his intellectual potential over something as silly as the vile cache of lurid child porn, not to mention the life-size mannequin of a young boy that was found in his possession when the police raided his home.
We’ve always been so forward-thinking when it comes to sexual offences, ones involving minors especially, that it would be such a shame to divert from our progressive views now.
Imagine the potential medals we may have missed out on if Noor Afizal, a national bowler, had been jailed for committing statutory rape against a 13-year-old a few years ago. Thank goodness we had the circumspection to allow the star athlete the freedom to pursue his bright future and kindly extended the same courtesy to Nur Fitri, the mathematics prodigy, too.
How short-sighted would it have been for us to foolishly allow the sexual exploitation of children and something as trivial as paedophilia, get in the way of winning trophies and recognition.
The Court of Appeal even went as far as to say that it was not in the public interest for Noor Afizal to serve prison time due to his bowling prowess.
It’s true, I am absolutely certain that we, the members of the public, would have hated to see a man who could pose a serious threat to our young be put behind bars, when he could be potentially bringing us sporting glory instead. Medals over minors any day.
Why are sexual crime statistics an official secret?
I think it’s wonderful that we are so considerate of the sex offenders in our midst. We keep our sexual crime statistics under wraps by classifying it under the Official Secrets Act (OSA), most probably because it contains some troublesome data, such as the 1,932 sexual crimes committed against children, an average of five reported cases per day, in the year of 2014 alone.
It would be terribly inhumane of us to subject anyone to guilt over having contributed to those statistics in any way. The last thing we would want, as a caring, loving society, is for a sexual predator or a paedophile to have to relive the consequences of their crimes.
After all, so many have profusely apologised and promised not to do it again and so, we must simply accept their words and move on, lest we hurt their precious feelings.
We are so benevolent in our treatment of rapists that one even escaped jail-time by marrying the 14-year-old girl he had previously raped twice. Other countries should really start taking notes as we are clearly making great strides here.
It is no easy feat, turning a horrid sexual assault into a nice little love story and yet, we’ve somehow managed to do it. It wont be long now before we decide that this may actually be a great way of keeping our prison population low, victims of rape quiet and sexual assault statistics down.
We can even spearhead a Marry Your Rapist (MYR) initiative and just like the currency, the movement can also set new standards in terms of how low we truly can go.
Sex offenders registry still a no-show
Further evidence of our compassionate nature can be seen in the long discussed, much hyped, but yet to eventuate official national sex offenders registry.
One of the reasons cited for the delay, has been the concerns of the Attorney-General’s chambers no less, about the infringement of rights of those on the list.
How truly fortunate for many sexual predators in this country. To not only be able to escape punishment if athletically capable, brilliant and/or willing to propose matrimony, but to also have their privacy prioritised and their identities protected so diligently.
We therefore should not have been so surprised to discover that Richard Huckle had selected Malaysia to live out his sick fantasies and subject up to 200 children to his demented sexual desires.
We should not be shocked at statistics that declare that every 35 minutes, a woman or girl is raped in the country.
We certainly should not be disgusted and outraged at the steady stream of child sexual abuse cases that we seem to be inundated with, on an almost daily basis.
Of course these heinous incidents are occurring, how can they not, when we so willingly and complicity continue to facilitate an environment for them to happen in.
We have harboured those in the wrong for far too long, instead of providing safe passage for those who truly need and deserve our care and protection.
Why should rapists and paedophiles cease their misdeeds when we carry on sending out the message that we don’t view sexual crimes and sexual predators as grave and urgent matters, requiring immediate and serious intervention?
So welcome back Selva Kumar Subbiah. You can take it easy and not worry about your heinous past as well as the serious warnings we have been given about your likelihood to re-offend.
We are, after all, similarly taking it easy on sex offenders.
Gayatri Unsworth is an FMT columnist.
With a firm belief in freedom of expression and without prejudice, FMT tries its best to share reliable content from third parties. Such articles are strictly the writer’s personal opinion. FMT does not necessarily endorse the views or opinions given by any third party content provider.