THE new Sexual Offences Bill is a very positive step for Guyana as this country has seen far too many instances, both past and present, of the exploitation, rape and sadistic urges of people in either positions of care or power being inflicted on the vulnerable and the children of our country without adequate measures being in place to deal with such.
Since the tabling of the Bill in the National Assembly in July of last year quite a disconcerting number of rumblings were heard that the provisions in the Bill were unreasonable and the punishments were too severe for the crimes.
I personally think these protests are/were preposterous and an abject disappointment to me as a woman and a caregiver that people can place a limit to punishment to be meted out to sexual abusers.  The measures that are being put in place to protect the victims who are our children, our young women and men and others that are sexually exploited and used, are welcomed and long awaited and will serve to weed out some of the sexual perverts in our society.
I believe that no measure, however punitive, is too severe for sexual offenders; they are at the very bottom of the society, particularly those that prey on the young and the innocent; they are bottom feeders and deserve to be treated as such.  I applaud this new initiative and hope with all my heart that the law will be used effectively and not allowed to lay at the wayside and not effectively enforced like so many other laws.
I call on the Guyana Police Force to act swiftly and professionally now that provisions are being made for the punishment of these perpetrators.  There have been too many instances where the Police have been lax in taking action in cases of sexual abuse and/or exploitation.  The provisions are there now, I say act accordingly and know that no one is above the law.
We now need to turn our attention to the issue of domestic violence which has become too deeply woven into the fabric of the lives of Guyanese.  Year after year, function after function we hear of the Police Commissioner and his other higher ups calling for more effective action to be taken by officers and sergeants in the police stations to take complaints of domestic abuse more seriously.  And while there has been a lot done to address this issue, it is miniscule compared to what needs to be done in order to make our men stand up and realise that they are put here to nurture and love as much as we  women are, and not to abuse and defile our womenfolk and children. Men need to stand up and take their place in the Guyanese society as our partners and not as our abusers.