Hong Kong authorities have said they will legislate against persistent sexual abuse of children and the act of sending images of genitals to others online without consent after consulting the public.
In a consultation report published on Thursday, the Security Bureau stated that with the city’s two professional legal associations expressing broad support for a dedicated law targeting persistent child sexual abuse, the government would include the crime in an amendment bill overhauling sex offence laws.
“In advancing this proposal, the government will study relevant laws in other jurisdictions so as to formulate targeted laws to address perpetrators’ persistent sexual abuse against children, while upholding the principles of presumption of innocence and fair trial,” the bureau wrote.
The public had “widely recognised and supported” the series of proposed measures to strengthen protection for minors and mentally incapacitated people from sexual exploitation and abuse, it added.
The government earlier said the review was necessary to modernise sexual offence laws two decades after the Law Reform Commission set up a subcommittee in 2006 to examine them.
While the original set of proposals did not include a separate offence targeting persistent, long-term sexual abuse of children, advocates have urged authorities to plug the legal loophole.
Victims often have difficulty recalling details of abuse that span years. This created a hurdle for prosecutors who must prove under a precedent set by the Court of Final Appeal in 1999 individual acts with sufficient detail for each charge.
The Bar Association also reversed its opposition to creating the new offence during the public consultation.
However, the 2001 proposal was eventually shelved after the Bar Association and the Law Society opposed the suggestion, saying it would not be possible to specify a representative number of charges, while defendants might not have a clear idea of the allegations against them.
Bar Association vice-chairman Martin Hui Siu-ting said last month that the barristers' group now “broadly supported” creating the offence, but cautioned that it would require some “safeguards” to ensure fairness for defendants and victims, as well as the integrity of court rulings.
“The [association] in principle supports the introduction of this new offence which no doubt [will] be subject to sufficient safeguards being in place to ensure a fair trial,” a spokeswoman said late on Thursday.
Separately in the consultation report, the bureau agreed to adopt suggestions to criminalise “cyberflashing” – the act of sending images of genitals to other people online without their consent.
Responding to public concerns over the scope of application for a legal defence of a defendant’s “genuine but mistaken” belief of consent, the bureau said it would follow the Law Reform Commission’s recommendation that the court should determine whether such a belief was reasonable.
The use of the term “rape” would also remain in the amendment bill despite an expansion of the offence to sexual penetration without consent in areas other than the vagina. The bureau explained this was to express the gravity and severity of the offence with a broadly understood term.
A spokesman for the Association Concerning Sexual Violence Against Women said he welcomed the government’s addition of the two offences.
However, he said the government’s approach to the “genuine but mistaken belief” defence was flawed, as frontline experience showed that a court’s judgment of a reasonable belief would not be able to eliminate prejudice against victims.
On the retention of the term “rape”, the spokesman raised concerns over public confusion in understanding the new, expanded offence when the name of the old one would remain in use. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
