Sexual harassment: Perps harass victims for self-satisfaction

SHAH ALAM - Experts reveal that there are seven factors that lead to the conduct of sexual harassment crimes in the country.

They were mental health problem, personality disorder, past experience, environment, tendency towards stimulation, having no control over social media apps and exposure to self-promising activity through such platforms.

Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI) psychologist and counsellor Dr Fauziah Mohd Saad said mental health usually stemmed from addiction problem where a perpetrator liked to do indecent things.

"This may be due to tendency towards stimulation where they always consume pornographic materials before.

"Other than that, is mental health, bad childhood experience as well as the environment where they grew up in or being influenced by friends.

"There is also a narcissistic personality disorder where they enjoy causing trouble, in which they like disturbing victims when the victim did not even like it," she told Sinar Harian.

On Wednesday, the Anti-Sexual Harassment Bill 2021 (AGS 2021) was unanimously approved at the Dewan Rakyat meeting.

The bill was approved after a debate involving 26 Members of Parliament on Tuesday and Wednesday after it was tabled for the third reading.

Meanwhile, Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) criminologist Dr Zalmizy Hussin said that factors that led to sexual harassment could also be seen in terms of social media applications.

He said sexual harassment contributed to almost 90 per cent of sexual crime cases involving victims whom had met their perpetrators through applications such as WeChat, Facebook, Tinder and MiChat.

"The WeChat application has the highest number of users compared to the other applications.

"Early exposure among children to gadgets and computers causes them to easily get wound up in such situation,” he said.

A former supermarket salesperson from Kuala Lumpur shared her experience of being sexually harassed twice at her workplace.

The victim, who was also a university student who wanted to be known as Rara said the two incidents happened when she was working part-time to pay for her studies.

“First it was the security guard who worked there. At first he only passed by in front of the store.

"Then he came into the shop and asked for my name and phone number. After that, he made obscene gestures at me in the shop," she told Sinar Harian on Friday.

The second incident, she said involved a foreign male customer who entered the store and pretended to ask about the products being sold.

She said while the man was taking the items, the latter moved closer to her and touched her.

“It really scared me," she said.

She said she subsequently lodged a report to the supermarket management on the security guard and she was transferred to work on another floor.

She said she also lodged a report on the second case, but they could not find the man.

Rara said she then decided to quit her job.

Meanwhile in another case, a public transport user said she was traumatised after she was sexually harassed by a man at the Ampang Jaya Light Rail Transit (LRT) station recently.

The woman who wanted to be identified as Hamisah said the incident happened at 4pm, when she had just got off the LRT station to go home on the e-hailing service.

"While waiting at the taxi stand, I saw a man and felt that something was amiss. At the same time, I was calling my friend.

"Then when I looked back, I saw the man standing very close behind my back and there was a lot of space there,” she said.

She said the man's action had made her uncomfortable and afraid that anything bad would happen to her.

She shared how scared she was at that time because when she ran away, the man yelled at her from afar as if he was angry because she had ran.

It was reported that on July 21, a male teacher was remanded for a week from last Thursday to assist in the investigation over the molestation of a 12-year old pupil at a public school in Langkawi.

Langkawi district police chief Assistant Commissioner Shariman Ashari said the 48-year-old suspect was arrested following a report lodged by the victim's mother on Wednesday.

Shariman said following the report, the teacher from the same school was detained for further investigation.

He said the case was investigated under Section 14(a) of the Sexual Offences Against Children Act 2017.

He requested for all parties to not make any speculations about the case.

Meanwhile, in another development, the Langkawi police were currently tracking down a man who had acted indecently while he was drunk in public on the island.

He added that preliminary investigations revealed that the man and his friends were local tourists and had left the Langkawi Island.

He said action was being taken to track down suspects and witnesses to help the investigation.