Alarming Sex Data

By Aqela Susu
Fiji Times
June 2, 2016

http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=356329

THE head of the Catholic Church of Fiji, Archbishop Peter Loy Chong, has urged church leaders to adopt strict policies and guidelines on disciplining church pastors involved in sexual offences.

Archbishop Chong made the comment after the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions released sexual offence statistics for last month.

The statistics revealed there were 46 sexual offence cases reported during the month of May, 29 of which were rape cases.

Of those 46 separate incidents, 16 people were charged, two of whom were church pastors who had committed serious sexual offences.

"The only advice now is for pastors and other churches to have strict guidelines because pastors have certain amount of power over people and people always have trust in them," Archbishop Chong said in an interview yesterday.

"So church leaders really need to take this on board and adopt certain policies and guidelines in terms of their ministry and how they react to minors along those lines.

"The other church leaders should follow that because the Catholic Church has learnt a lot from the sexual abuse that has taken place in the church worldwide.

"We have very strict rules now about pastors and minors, and if any person or priest is involved in this kind of sexual abuse cases, we have guidelines and policies to discipline them and address them so no nonsense kind of approach."

Fiji Women's Crisis Centre co-ordinator Shamima Ali commended the ODPP for releasing the statistics.

This, she said, would assist many organisations with their strategic planning in responding accordingly.

The statistics also revealed there were 25 victims of the sexual offences, of which 18 victims were under the age of 18 years. Of those 18 victims, 11 were rape victims and nine were sexual assault victims under 18 years old.

There was also one serious sexual offence case that involved a four-year-old and the accused person was the victim's father.

"These statistics on rape and sexual offences from the ODPP continue to be of concern to us. It would be helpful, however, if we knew the factors that led to the discontinuance of cases," Ms Ali said.

"This will help police and relevant agencies understand where the weaknesses are in preparing cases for prosecution. The FWCC and its branches are always ready to support survivors of violence and we will continue to work with men to change their bad behaviours toward women."