Child Sexual Abuse in Malaysia > The laws and the punishment for CSAM

 

What are child sexual abuse materials and 

how Malaysia's laws punish CSAM crimes?

Ida Lim

8 August 2024·3-min read

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 8 — A 31-year-old unemployed man was today charged with allegedly kidnapping six-year-old Johor girl Albertine Leo Jia Hui, and also other crimes such as allegedly possessing and collecting "child sexual abuse materials" (CSAM) in the form of over 5,000 images and videos.

But what is CSAM? What are the punishments awaiting those who own CSAM? How can Malaysians keep their children safe?

1. CSAM: The new name for "child porn" in Malaysia's laws

In July 2023, the Malaysian government replaced the term "child pornography" with the new term "child sexual abuse materials" (CSAM) in the Sexual Offences Against Children Act 2017 (SOAC).

This is because children can never consent to sexual acts.

Under the 2017 law's Section 4, the definition of CSAM includes visual, audio, written representations of a child engaged in sexually explicit conduct; or realistic or graphic images of a child or a person appearing to be a child engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

2. CSAM offences: Punishable by up to 30 years' jail in Malaysia

The 2017 law's Section 5 to 10 lists down the punishments for six main different offences related to CSAM, ranging from a maximum five-year jail term (for accessing or possessing CSAM) to the most severe punishment of maximum 30 years' jail (for making CSAM).

3. What are the other sexual crimes against children in Malaysia?

Under the same 2017 law, there are also three offences relating to child grooming:

• Section 11 (sexually communicating with a child; maximum three-year jail term);

• Section 12 (child grooming; maximum five-year jail term and whipping);

• Section 13 (meeting following child grooming; maximum 10-year jail term and whipping).

The same 2017 law also has four other sexual crimes against children:

• Section 14 (physical sexual assault on a child, maximum 20-year jail term and whipping);

• Section 15 (non-physical sexual assault on a child - including making a child exhibit parts of their body; punishable by maximum 10-year jail term or maximum RM20,000 fine or both);

• Section 15A (sexual performance by a child - such as livestreaming or social media postings; maximum 20-year jail term and maximum RM50,000 fine);

• Section 15B (sexual extortion of a child - such as threatening to share video or photograph of a child's body or private parts; maximum 10-year jail term).
  I would like to see this section increased in sentencing. Sexual extortion, or, sextortion, is rapidly growing, there are even call centers devoted to this heinous crime. In Canada and the USA, children have committed suicide because of sextortion.

4. How can Malaysians keep their children safe online?

In a January report by Malay Mail, Bukit Aman’s Sexual, Women and Child Investigation Division’s (D11) principal assistant director Assistant Commissioner of Police Siti Kamsiah Hassan said child sexual offenders would use a fake identity online to target and befriend children on social media apps, dating apps and on online games, before grooming them online for sexual activities or to carry out other sexual crimes against them.

5. What to do if a child has experienced harm from sexual crimes?

According to non-governmental organisation Women's Centre for Change (WCC) Penang's online resources, a child who has been sexually abused should be given immediate medical attention at government hospitals and the case should be reported to the Social Welfare Department or to the police.

WCC Penang also recommends that the child should be protected from further abuse, and continue their daily routine and be given support and reassurance.

Recommended reading:

Make no mistake, downloading and viewing ‘child porn’ is a crime in Malaysia - here's what the numbers tell us

Protecting children in Malaysia: How they might fall prey to sexual crimes online (Part I)

Parents in Malaysia, do you see these red flags? How to protect your children from online sexual abuse (Part II)

Why it’s not just ‘beware the stranger’ for kids anymore, and how Malaysia’s add-on jail time can deter sexual offenders

Mapping Malaysia’s child sexual abuse cases: Why lower numbers doesn’t always mean better

Father, Son Accused Of Child Sex Abuse: Bible Defense?

by Michael Allen

Father and son Timothy and Esten Ciboro, who are charged with abusing and molesting children, announced Jan. 20 in Toledo, Ohio, that they want to use the Bible as their legal defense.

Lucas County Common Pleas Judge Linda Jennings ruled that the men will be allowed to bring their Bible to their trial, in which they will be representing themselves.

The two men are charged with several counts of "rape, kidnapping, and endangering children for allegedly abusing children in their care," notes The Toledo Blade.

Esten told Jennings that the Bible is "the only law book that truly matters," and added: "There's a great deal of strategy in Scripture and I use those strategies in everything I do."

There's their problem right there! They see the Bible as a Law book when, in fact, it is a revelation of God and His grace.

Jennings agreed to allow the father and son to place a Bible on their defense table in court during their trial.

One of their alleged victims is a 13-year-old girl who told authorities that she was chained in a basement inside the Ciboro home.

The teen escaped the home in May 2016, noted WNWO.

The girl, donned in unkempt hair and clothes, was discovered by Karen Loudermill, who asked the young lady where her parents were.

The girl said that she had a dad, "but he's not my biological dad. Mom is in Las Vegas." She went on to say: "We [are] on a point system. 50 points, get punished, shackled to basement." The teen said she had lived in the home with her stepfather since 2012.

Loudermill noticed the shackles on the teen's feet and convinced the  girl to come inside her workplace. The child asserted that Esten, her stepbrother, punished her when she was shackled in the basement.

The girl (along with a brother and sister) was placed in the custody of Lucas County Children Services, while Timothy and Esten were arrested.

The girl's mother, Stafonda Hawkins, was also arrested in May 2016, reported WTOL.

Hawkins was picked up in Toledo by the U.S. Marshals Northern Ohio Violent Fugitive Task Force for allegedly violating her parole, which was issued in November 2015.

According to police, Hawkins and her young son were living with an unidentified family member.

Mother of girl allegedly held captive arraigned

on unrelated charges; 

By WTOL Staff   May 26, 2016

Stafonda Hawkins cried in court as she waited to be arraigned. (Source: WTOL)

Stafonda Hawkins, the mother of a 13-year-old girl who Toledo police say was held captive for a year in a house on Noble Street was arraigned in Toledo Municipal Court on Thursday on charges unrelated to the case. 

On Friday, she was appeared before the Sylvania Municipal Court via video on charges of writing bad checks. She will be sentenced for those charges on June 6.

The girl's step-father and step-brother, Timothy and Esten Ciboro, have both been indicted on charges of kidnapping and endangering children and are scheduled to be arraigned in Lucas County Common Pleas Court in early June.

Stafonda Hawkins has been booked in the Lucas County Jail for a probation violation from 2009 after she left Ohio and reportedly began a life in Las Vegas.

It’s unclear if she’ll face any charges in connection with her daughter’s case.

Hawkins oldest sister, Shirley Noble, was in court Friday and spoke to WTOL 11 about the case. 

She says she thought the house was vacant, because she used to drive by and never saw the kids. 

"I thought they had moved, so I stopped going by there," she said. 

Noble says she doesn't understand how someone could do what the Ciboro's allegedly did to a child, and that this could have all been avoided. 

"Out of all the things in the world, why would you do to a little kid when you could of took her somewhere and give her to somebody. Take her downtown and if you don't want her no more, just took them downtown and just say I can't handle this," said Noble.

She says if there's truth in all of this, she wants justice for her niece.

"I want them to be punished, because that's not right," she said. "If they don't get punished, somebody going to hurt them."

Old Order Mennonite Sentenced to 5 Years for 'Unfathomable' Child Abuse

It is not clear how sexual assault fits into this story, but it does.

Community forgives offender, leaves 'vengeance to God'

By Riley Laychuk, CBC News


A sentence could be handed down as early as Wednesday for the final man who admitted to abusing children in a small Manitoba town with cattle prods and straps.  (CBC)

​Unjustifiable and unfathomable. Those were just two of the harsh words a judge used to describe the abuse of children in a Manitoba Old Order Mennonite community when handing down a five-year sentence to the man considered the "main actor" in the abuse.

Justice John Menzies handed down the sentence Wednesday afternoon in a Brandon courtroom full of members of the Old Order Mennonite community, which cannot be identified due to a publication ban.

The man, who previously pleaded guilty to seven counts of assault with a weapon and one count of assault, sat silently in the prisoner's box as the Crown gave a lengthy background on the case and on the small, insular horse-and-buggy community where the abuse took place between 2011 and 2013.

The man pleaded guilty Wednesday morning to one count of sexual assault. A second count was stayed by the Crown in exchange for the guilty plea. 

About two dozen community members sat in court Wednesday, some with their heads down, while others held their heads in their hands. Several left the room when the Crown attorney started detailing the facts related to the sexual assault charge. 

  Old Order Mennonite sentenced to 5 years for 'unfathomable' child abuse 


A respected elder 

The Crown described the man as the "main actor" in the abuse, directing and involving others in the discipline of the community's children.

On Wednesday morning, the Crown painted a picture of a man who was considered a respected elder in the community. Parents were told to take their children to his home where they were to receive counseling.

That counseling then turned into discipline sessions and punishment where cattle prods and straps were used on the children, along with the hands of the four men and one woman who were charged.

The man's defence lawyer called his actions an "unfortunate chain of events," saying the man believed that he was doing the right thing for the community at the time. He said his client is sorry and regrets his actions.


Harsh words from judge 

While delivering his sentence, Justice Menzies out the names of each of the victims of what he described as "torture." Their names are protected by a publication ban.

"I hope that as I read out those names that you could see their faces," he told the man. "This is not the type of offences that happened once, or happened twice, these are offences that were inflicted on numerous occasions over the course of years."

"Long, prolonged periods of angry questioning, isolation, physical assaults, prolonged assaults with leather belts, beaten with wooden boards, electric shock with cattle prods … Who on this earth could possibly think that that is conduct that a child justified?" he said. "What could a child do to deserve that kind of treatment?" 

Menzies compared the abuse to the man and the other abusers waging a war on the community's children, turning their church, a place of comfort and refuge, into a place of terror.

"What does a young child think when they are struck 40 times with a leather strap?" Menzies added.  "All you taught them was how to be victims." 

Menzies said the man abused his position of trust with the victims.

"The crimes are serious, unjustifiable and, in fact, unfathomable," Menzies told the court.

The 5½-year prison term was the joint recommendation put forward by both Crown and defence lawyers earlier Wednesday morning and the worst out of all of those sentenced for the abuse to date.


Fourth man sentenced

The man was the fourth man to be sentenced for the abuse, which involved dozens of the community's children. He was lead away by Sheriff's officers showing no emotion while the community members in the courtroom stood in silence.

Two previously sentenced men received sentences of six months to a year. Another man, who was sentenced in late June, received 18 months behind bars for his role in the abuse. 

A woman was handed three years probation for her role in shocking two girls with a cattle prod and hitting another one with a strap. 

Thirteen people were initially charged in connection with the excessive discipline. Charges against four men and four women were stayed in 2014 after they agreed to peace bonds requiring them to enter counseling and not contact the other accused.

Social workers took 42 children from 10 families into custody after the abuse came to light. 

Thirty-eight of the community members have since returned to live with their parents and away from the modern technologies, like running water, television and internet, that they would have experienced in foster care.

Two teenagers refused to return to the community. Two of the children were made permanent wards of Manitoba Child and Family Services. 


Leave 'vengeance to God'

Outside court, a community leader handed reporters a statement, expressing deep regret and shame for the abuse but forgiveness for the offender.

The statement said they do not want to seek revenge or reimbursement for any of the losses they have suffered.

"We leave justice to the government and vengeance to God," the statement read.

The community is now hoping to heal and provide safety for the families, the statement said.

Court heard that 13 families lived in the small community at the time the abuse came to light. Nine remain. 


Full statement from the community

As members of the [name withheld due to a publication ban] Mennonite Community, we express deep regret for the abuse and shame that took place in our midst.

We want to humbly [re-build] the community in harmony with Christ and his teaching. 

We do not want to seek revenge or ask for reimbursements for the losses we suffered, instead we choose to forgive the offender and desire that he would come to full repentance so the he can be found forgiven from God as well. 

We leave justice to the government and vengeance to God.

Our desire is that our community may heal and our families be safe.  

I would hope that you would bring in some teachers to teach you how to interpret the Bible properly. Your theology and how you practice it is not what Jesus suffered and died for.

One of the Worst Murderers and Rapists in American History

By Melissa Pandika
THE DAILY DOSE



Carl Panzram — a tattooed, 6-foot-tall giant of a man with cold gray eyes — stowed away on a ship bound for Angola around 1920 to work as a merchant seaman. After arriving in Lobito Bay, he hired a half-dozen local guides for a crocodile-hunting expedition. But Panzram had other prey on his mind. As their canoe wended its way down the river, he shot each crew member dead before feeding their corpses to the hungry crocodiles lurking below.

That was just one of many crimes, including 21 murders and more than 1,000 rapes of young boys and men, Panzram admitted to committing. Unlike charming and cunning serial killers Ted Bundy or Rodney Alcala, Panzram remained brutally honest. “For all of these things, I am not the least bit sorry,” he seethed in his autobiography, penned from his prison cell. “I hate the whole damned human race including myself.”

But could he really be that bad? Yes, at least according to experts who have studied him and found that the roots of his evil could be traced back to his childhood. Born in 1891 to a poor farming family in Minnesota, Panzram’s father abandoned his family when he was about 8 years old. Soon after, Panzram landed in a reform school called Red Wing for a string of burglaries. Red Wing schooled Panzram in sadism, punishing him with beatings and rapes, which led him to a realization: “‘The world is this shithole, and I’m going to go through the world and wreak havoc in it,’” said Harold Schechter, a true-crime writer specializing in serial killers.

After graduating, he spent years sleeping on freight trains. During one ride in a boxcar, he was gang raped by transients — leaving him “a sadder, sicker but wiser boy,” Panzram wrote. In 1915, he traveled through Idaho, California and other states along the Columbia River, burning and burglarizing buildings and raping countless young men and boys. Around the same time, Panzram was sentenced to seven years at the Oregon State Penitentiary for burglary. To punish his unruliness, the wardens hung him from the rafters for hours, turned a hose on him, and kept him in solitary confinement for weeks, leaving him to feed on cockroaches.

According to Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, conscience is attached to the highest that you know. Panzram's dad, having deserted his family in the most dire conditions, could not have taught Carl much in the way of moral character. Neither could anyone in the reform school, the freight trains, or the prisons he frequented. Consequently, Panzram was completely devoid of conscience.

Add to the lack of conscience a seething anger from all the abuse he suffered and you have the makings of a real psychopath. But, Panzram, it appears was more than that. A 2012 documentary 'Carl Panzram: The Spirit of Hatred and Vengeance' may be more accurately named than even the author knows. Trauma opens one up to spiritual invasion; repeated, brutal trauma almost guarantees a welcoming home for the demonic. 

It was that evil in him that allowed him to murder so many people without the least regret. It was also that evil that caused him to defile roughly 1000 boys, destroying their innocence. Evil hates innocence and cannot touch it without some dreadful event making it possible. Defiling innocence is a demonic act of defiance against God.

Not long after escaping in 1918, Panzram committed his first murders. In New York, he hired sailors to work on a yacht bought with his robbery bounty, lulled them to sleep with alcohol and shot­­­­­ them dead — all 10 of them. Soon after, he set sail for Angola, raping and killing a young boy before the crocodile-hunting expedition. About a year later, he hid aboard a Lisbon-bound ship, only to find that the police there were on the lookout for him, aware of his crimes in Africa. So, soon after, he stowed away on a ship to the U.S.

In 1928, Panzram was arrested for a series of burglaries and jailed in Washington, D.C. After a warden found out that he had tried to escape, the guards handcuffed and suspended him from a beam, beating him unconscious. Feeling sorry for Panzram, 26-year-old prison guard Henry Lesser handed him a dollar to buy food and cigarettes. “No one had ever been kind to him in his life,” said John Borowski, who directed the 2012 documentary Carl Panzram: The Spirit of Hatred and Vengeance. Over time, the two became friends. Each day, Lesser slipped him a pencil and a few sheets of paper, convincing him to write his life story.

Panzram was sentenced to 25 years at United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth in Kansas. There, he crushed laundry foreman Robert Warnke’s skull with an iron bar, landing a spot on death row and refusing human rights groups’ efforts to spare him from the gallows. After years of abuse, “it was his form of suicide,” Borowski said. Panzram got the death he craved in September 1930. “Hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard!” he seethed at the executioner — “rage personified,” as he referred to himself, until the end. “I could kill 10 men while you’re fooling around!”

Lesser kept Panzram’s writings, but publishers weren’t comfortable with the graphic manuscript until 1970, when it was published as Killer: A Journal of Murder. “The guy was really quite an amazing writer,” said Joe Coleman, who painted the cover art for the book, and who was “struck by the intelligence and the things [Panzram] could have been capable of.”

'Killer: A Journal of Murder' - nothing much has changed in 46 years. The rape of 1000 boys is not even mentioned in the title, while he murdered only 21 men. 1000 boys rapes probably means 1000 lives destroyed, and who knows how many in the next generation, and the next. Sexually abused boys often become sexual abusers of children themselves. That one man may have been responsible for creating tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of pedophiles.

Beyond helping criminologists better understand the minds of killers like Panzram, Borowski said the autobiography serves as a lesson — one that still holds relevance amid recent reports of inmate abuse at Rikers Island and other prisons. “He tries to teach our future generations not to create more monsters like him,” he said, adding that Panzram, “above anybody else, should be listened to.”

And what is he teaching us? Is it that bad behaviour cannot be corrected by traumatic punishment? When I was 3, my grandmother corrected my bed-wetting by holding my face down in the puddle of urine until I either fainted or just gave up trying to breathe. It definitely cured my bed-wetting, but I have had precious few good night's sleep without medication in the 65 years since. And, I lived with a spirit of fear for the next 55 years. Trauma is not a teacher; it's a destroyer.

OZY AUTHOR
MELISSA PANDIKA

Alarm Over Numbers of Child Sex Abuses in Trinadad & Tobago

But that's just the tip of the iceberg

Yvonne Webb
The Guradian, Tinidad & Tobago

Chairman of the Couva/Tabaquite/Talparo Regional Corporation, Henry Awong, said he was alarmed by the findings of the latest report of the Children’s Authority which has identified his region as being one of three with the highest number of sexually abused children. 

And two Members of Parliament for Couva North and South, Ramona Ramdial and Rudy Indarsingh, also expressed alarm over the statistics and called on the Ministry of Social Development and Family Services to provide counselling and support for the children and their families.

Ramdial also called for stricter penalties and punishment for the offenders. She said the Children’s Authority, which became effective under the former People’s Partnership administration, has encouraged reporting by both parents and victims themselves.

“But more needs to be done. It is a terrible state of affairs for our children. These high number of cases continues to be worrying. Definitely more needs to be done, especially in dealing with broken families. More counselling, stricter penalties and punishment.”

You also need to educate the children in an age appropriate way as to what child sex abuse is and how to report it. I suggest you look at Erin's Law as an example.

Indarsingh said he was saddened by the report and appealed to Prime Minister Keith Rowley not to place the protection, care and rehabilitation of the nation’s children on the back burner.

Saying the abuse has the ability to disrupt the functioning of that child for the rest of his/her life, Indarsingh advocated for the The Children’s Authority to be given all tools and resources to tackle this serious issue of child abuse.


1000 children

A report compiled by the Authority over a nine-month period, May 18, last year to Feb 17, showed some 1,000 boys and girls, from ages one and upwards, were sexually abused.

The highest reports of sexual abuse against children were recorded in the districts of San Juan/Laventille (17.4 per cent)  Tunapuna/Piarco ( 13.3 per cent) and CTTRC (9.6 per cent).

“That is alarming and frightening. It is 1,000 cases you are talking about in nine months. I am sure there may be more, probably not reported,” Awong said. He noted councillors through their interaction with the community would have had unconfirmed reports of what was happening but not to that extent.


Situation likely to be much worse

There are roughly 630,000 children in Trinadad & Tobago. 1000 sexually abused children is just 0.16% of that, meaning, 1000 is just the tip of the iceberg. The district values of 17.4, 13.3 and 9.6 are certainly more accurate. They average out to 13.4% which translates to nearly 85,000 children being sexually abused in their lifetime (18 years), on your islands.

Not only are there many cases that are not reported, it should be understood that about 80% of sexually abused children are repeatedly sexually abused. Consequently, your 1000 cases probably refer to 1000 children, but the actual occurrence of child sex abuse with respect to those 1000, is likely to be in the tens of thousands. With respect to 85,000 children - the number of occurrences of child sex abuse are certainly in the hundreds of thousands, if not in the millions every 18 years. 

Awong said any information relating to suspicion of child abuse is reported to the relevant authorities.

Couva/Tabaquite/Talparo, Trinadad & Tobago