P A E D O P H I L I A
What is paedophilia? Paedophilia is a serious issue of sexual attraction towards children. The word itself origins from Greek (paîs, paidós) which means child and (philía) means friendly love or friendship. Paedophile has three sub-types which are Infantophilia, Hebephilia and also Ephebophilia. An infantophilia is usually referred to those who sexually attracted to children under the age of 5. In the other hand, Hebephilia is a sexual preference in 11 to 14 year olds. Ephebophilia is a combination of both subtypes which is also means another name for paedophilia. This issue has been surprisingly rising in our era nowadays especially in Malaysia. Moreover, paedophilia can be link very closely with child abuse. A few decades ago, children are made to be brides due to no choice to supporting the family. Nowadays, we have plenty options to not let the children be brides just to secure their future.
In this advanced era of technology, there are so many issues especially in Malaysia that could be seen as paedophilic without we realizing. Recently, in Kelantan, a 41-year old man from Malaysia married an 11-years old girl from Thailand, in Thailand as a third wife. This issue then be questioned and debated in Syariah court if it’s okay to approve the marriage. A fine of RM 1,800 was given to the man for unpermissioned marriage but then, a marriage certificate was given after the fine was settled. According to Islamic laws in Kelantan, children under the age of 16 can still can get married under the permission of a Syariah court judge, despite it being illegal under federal law. The authorities currently working on laws to increase the minimum age for marriage to 18-years old and above. There’s even another case in Kelantan where both couple are from Malaysia where a 44-years old man takes a 15-years old girl as the second wife. The man already had two children back at home. This case was also due to money problems to support the child’s family and to let her lead a better life. The Syariah court still approves the marriage as a polygamy status.
This issue has been overwhelming in Malaysia due to certain reasons. One of the reasons are due to excessive amount of immigrants that enters Malaysia every year. Immigrants are foreigners to our country. Some foreigners approaches to Malaysian families to live with them and shockingly, some of the families accept them. When this happens, the immigrants and the child may be start to develop feelings towards one another and try to get married and run away back to their country. This is when we know that somebody is a paedophile. They are wanting the children just to satisfy their lust. Second issue that is still a major is weak protection of the internet, which is the bad side of the internet or as we call it the ‘dark web’. In this dark web, there’s a lot of obscene contents that isn’t appropriate for everyone to see or watch. In the latest case in 2014, Richard Huckles, Britain’s worst ever paedophile was admitted using the dark web to exchange child sex abuse images and tips among his members. This Huckle guy has been spending 17 years in jail as a British sex offender for his obnoxious crime. The third reason is because of psychology disorder or as we call it neurodevelopmental. Post-traumatic stress disorder could also leads to brain abnormalities. Why paedophiles do what they doing? This question probably the most frequent question that lingered in people’s mind. Most probably that the person itself has a dark past or traumatic events that happens in the family or to them. They tend to ‘take revenge’ and repay them to other innocent children. Some people do this because they have serious mental illness that can hardly be cured. Traumatic experiences in the early life of paedophilic could have been one of the major cause for their brain abnormalities. There’s even a research states that men becomes the paedophiles to conquer his feelings of powerlessness by becoming an abuser himself. Another reason of being pedophile is influence from brutal movies produced by some production companies. Even worse, most of the movies are illegal to produce. Our mind easily adapt to what we see often. Some people say curiosity kills the cat, then one actually tries to do it and become a hobby.
Paedophiles are not only attacking girls but also boys but in a minority. An article once mentioned that the amount of offenders are mostly long-term recidivists. Most of them are in their eighties which are all paedophiles. Most of the victims have consequences forced and brutal sexual penetration especially in the private areas. This has great impacts on the victims such as sleep disturbance, phobias, nightmares and most importantly losing their toilet training skills which makes it multiples times harder to lead their daily life. Those children that became brides will one day be pregnant at a very young age, will experience pre-mature childbirth and could be result to death. Some could also have sexually transmitted diseases. This will block their future from being a successful individual or even earn their own income. Child abuse & child marriage would affect children more psychologically and mentally which manifests in their behavior. These impacts could lead to the worse and unpleasant case which is self-harm and suicide. Those children will feel that they’ve lost their dignity, shame and feeling unwanted or self-hatred which children are not supposed to feel.. They will continue hurting themselves until they feel ‘clean’. These paedophiles contribute nothing but shame towards their country and smear the country’s name as well as increasing the rate crime over the years. Another implication is the violation of children’s right. Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) said that it perpetuates the rights against children and gender violence against women. These rights has include all rights of children including experience and enjoy the childhood, having freedom to do whatever they want and choose anything they want for education. Social interaction with other people also include in this Right and not social isolation. Being married at such a very young age disrupts their growth as a human being.
In any issues in this world, there must be a way to cure this sick issue in this society. Like most people says, prevention is always better than cure. Truth be told, every problems comes from the person itself, how the person teach themselves manners. To be exact, home & family is the root where we learn and practice our manners. What this means is every person especially men, in this case, need to educate themselves with lots of knowledge either using books or socializing to know what is wrong and what is right. First of all, a campaign in the neighbourhood should be held to increase the awareness of especially parents towards their children and who enters their children’s life. A slogan of “Children Are Not Brides” should be used to viral this campaign. Although campaign seems cliché in this era, somewhat it will open some parents’ eyes that marrying their children to ‘secure their future’ is not the only solution. Other than that, since paedophilia is related to the dark web a lot, the government should do something about the Internet to tighten the security and make this inappropriate content and the user banned. Some articles stated that vast amount of Internet addresses has been transmitting child abuse materials in Kuala Lumpur by Richard Huckle. The students that studying in the field of computer security should learn a lot about the security and not misuse it for cruel intentions. Third prevention is by rehabilitation. Some paedophiles have mental issues that they didn’t know of. A health checkup on mental issues should be done on every year on individuals and an action should be taken if it’s abnormal. These people should be send to rehab to cure or at least reduce their issues of mental. Other than that, government in every states should higher their legal age of consent. When the bar was set too low, it’s basically allowing/legalising paedophilia to rom around the city even more and find underage girls to play around/marry.
We can conclude that there are so many wrongs in the society when child abuse and child marriages happens very often in the country. In fact, there are a lot of ways to make Malaysia a better place. We, as a society must contribute to help defend these children to have a bright future ahead instead of being married to ‘secure’ their future. Preventions can be done by step by steps because something is always better than nothing. My hope for the country is for the people and higher levels to stop overlook and normalizing this case because it is definitely serious and need to be concern about. The young generations holds the future’s destiny. A contribution from the society to this issue will gain other country’s respect and holds Malaysia’s name up high.