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IF you produce, store, distribute, search for, or access child sexual abuse content, also known as child pornography, the police will track and prosecute you.
That is the warning given by Bukit Aman, Division of Sex Research, Women and Children (D11) Direct Assistant Comm Siti Kamsiah Hassan.
“Many of the suspects we arrested said they did not know it was a crime. They said they were only viewing child pornography in their private space. For them, they had no physical contact with the child, so they don’t see it as a crime, ”says Siti Kamsiah, who heads D11, the special police unit that handles cases involving women, children and sex crimes.
More worryingly, he adds, many in Malaysia have this misperception.
“Many members of the public do not feel that a crime is committed if there is no physical contact (with a child). That is why we must inform and educate the public that access to child pornography is a serious crime. “
Viewers directly support and create demand for child sexual abuse content every time they search for the material. If there is demand, there will also be criminals producing it on the dark web to satisfy that market, explains Siti Kamsiah.
Those who access and share child sexual abuse content may not know the victims, but the victims are there and they are real.
“It is a crime: to produce it, share it, exchange it, buy it, sell it, possess it or access the material. If you access it, the police can detect and track you. Don’t be surprised if we suddenly show up at your house, ”says Siti Kamsiah.
According to data provided by the Dutch police based in Malaysia in 2015, our country has the highest number of IP addresses uploading and downloading photos and images of child sexual abuse content in Southeast Asia.
In response to the growing number of sexual predators targeting children online, a special task force D11 was established in 2018 with the technological know-how to track the IP addresses of suspects. The task force works hand-in-hand with Interpol and police abroad to identify and track users and unions operating across borders.
From January to September of this year, the police registered 31 cases related to child sexual abuse content.
Selangor (seven) and Kuala Lumpur (five) were the states with the highest number of cases. At the national level, six cases involved the production of child sexual abuse content, 13 cases involved distribution, and 12 cases were for access to the material.
In Malaysia, a child is defined as a person under the age of 18 and is protected by the Children’s Act 2001 and the Sexual Offenses Against Children Act 2017. The term “child pornography” in the Sexual Offenses Against Children Act Children of 2017 refers to the and / or written representation of a child involved in sexually explicit content.
Section 4 of the Sex Offenses Against Children Act 2017 states that the law also includes people posing as children engaged in sexually explicit conduct and realistic images of the act. Sexual grooming, or communicating with a child in a sexual way, is also a crime that carries a punishment of up to five years and spanking.
Those convicted of producing child sexual abuse content face a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison. For preparing to produce child pornography, they face a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. Those who seek, obtain, sell or distribute the material face a maximum of 15 years. The punishment for knowingly accessing child pornography is a maximum of five years in prison.
Those guilty of crimes can also face spanking.
Siti Kamsiah explains that the police can only digitally track users who access child sexual abuse material.
“If we can trace them, it means they have accessed child pornography. And in most cases, when we get to the places that alert us, we have found this material on their computers. In many cases, the downloaded photos and videos are of foreign children, ”he says.
In fact, under the Sex Offenses Against Children Act 2017, even if a suspect has committed the crime abroad, the Malaysian police can still conduct investigations and arrest the suspect as long as he is a Malaysian citizen.
From 2017 to March 2019, the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development included 3,000 names in its registry of child sex offenders that can be accessed at any office of the state or district Department of Social Welfare.
In one of the most disturbing cases of sexual crimes against children, Malaysian student Nur Fitri Azmeer Nordin, then 23 years old and studying at Imperial College London on a Mara scholarship, was convicted in the UK in 2015 for possessing more than 30,000 videos and images of child pornography. . The British media reported that many of the files were classified as Category A, which means that they showed the most extreme form of abuse.
Nur Fitri served a nine-month jail sentence before returning to Malaysia, where he enrolled for a Ph.D. at the Faculty of Mathematical Sciences at Kebangsaan University Malaysia.
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