2024-01-25 09:18:59
Faced with constantly increasing sexual crimes, the Council of Ministers is in favor of harsher sentences for rapists of minors. New measures are being considered by the government: life imprisonment, chemical castration or surgical castration, particularly for rapists of children under 10 years old.
Parliament will therefore soon have to look into this new penal reform which would not fail to crystallize the debates within both chambers.
Chemical castration consists of the administration of drugs to inhibit sexual urges by acting on the production of testosterone; chemical castration is reversible when the treatment is stopped. Surgical castration consists of removing the reproductive organs.
Several countries such as Russia, Indonesia, Australia, Germany and Pakistan use chemical castration as punishment for sexual offenses, including pedophilia. In France, chemical castration is not a sentence handed down by a judge, but a medical treatment decided by a doctor. As part of a treatment injunction, pronounced by a criminal court or an assize court, the doctor decides whether a treatment aimed at reducing the condemned person’s libido is useful or not. If the convicted person refuses to follow this treatment, even though it has been prescribed to him by a doctor, this constitutes a violation of his obligations contained in the judicial measure.
The debates on this bill in any case promise to be even more heated in the National Assembly which often serves as a refuge for certain delinquents. A few years ago, we remember that a deputy accused of rape and known to be a notorious rapist was elected by his peers to sit as Vice-President of the lower house.
The latest UNICEF statistics, published in 2023, show that only 19% of minor victims of sexual violence had filed a complaint. This same report estimates that 81% of perpetrators of rape and barbaric acts against children are free.
In 2018, available data indicated that five regions stand out for high incidence rates of rape, namely: Sava and Betsiboka (three times higher than the national average), Diana, Boeny and Alaotra Mangoro. The Sofia Atsinanana, Itasy, Ihorombe and Melaky regions have relatively high rates compared to the national average.
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