Most complaints of child sexual abuse in Malaysia do not lead to successful prosecutions, largely due to weaknesses in the nation’s criminal justice system, police, lawmakers and child welfare groups say.
According to classified data Malaysian police compiled, 12,987 cases of child sexual abuse were reported between January 2012 and July of this year. Charges were filed in 2,189 cases, resulting in just 140 convictions.
The data doesn’t show how many people were involved, or what happened in the cases where there were no convictions after charges were filed. No details were disclosed in the cases where there were convictions.
Child rights advocates have long pushed the government to publicly disclose data on child sexual abuse to increase awareness so action can be taken to address what they call a growing problem.
The reason the Malaysian government doesn’t publish child sexual abuse data is because it is protected under Malaysia’s Official Secrets Act. The government provides data on child abuse only at the request of a member of parliament.
“We don’t want people to misinterpret it,” said Ong Chin Lan, the head of the Sexual, Women and Children Investigation Division of the Malaysian national police. The government doesn’t want to unduly alarm the public about possibly high numbers of child abuse cases, she explained.