SHAH ALAM - A complete ban on websites including social media that encourage the occurence of sexual crimes against children need to be done more seriously in order to overcome this increasingly worrying issue.
Fomer Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) children's commissioner Professor Datuk Noor Aziah Mohd Awal said that the sensitive and obscene contents from certain websites does not encourage perpetrators to make children as their victims, but exposes them to participate in obscene activities.
She said the government needed o create a monitoring system and laws to regulate contents on certain websites and to take actions against dark web operators who exploit children.
"We respect freedom of information and speech, but at the same time there should be security controls for children. Adjustment and actions need to be done right away.
"Parents are also responsible to ensure the children's access to inappropriate websites is controlled. There are ways to do it but how many people actually know?
"All of our children have their own smart devices but who teaches parents on how to control them?," she told Sinar.
The Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia legal expert also said that failure to control access to children's gadgets can cause them to fall into indecent behavior such as indulging in luxuries given by individuals who wish to take advantage on them or known as sugar daddy.
"It can trap the child who then becomes a sexual crime victim for life as they are forced to pay the predator.
"There are many cases where the victim's family is forced to pay up to RM2,000 a month (to the prepetrator) because they are afraid that the indecent pictures of the child will spread and disgrace the family's name," she said.
She explained that a lot of things on the dark web can exploit children or threaten victims, causing many of them of being scared of lodging a police report.
She always welcomed the government's effort to amend the Sexual Offences against Children Act 2017 which will be presented in Parliament on March 29.