Parents have strict responsibility to protect their own children against paedophilia

In mid-November, North Six – an advertising-production company – and its production set designer – Nicholas Des Jardins, were sued by its client, the now damned French fashion house, Balenciaga. The cause of action was in relation to a publication of a photo, which showed a Balenciaga purse on top of a document-strewn desk used as part of its spring/summer 2023 collection in collaboration with Adidas.

In one of the documents in the background was a partially visible page from the US Supreme Court decision in a child pornography case.

The cited court document essentially highlighted the legal framework that outlaws the advertising, promoting, presenting or distributing child pornography. Balenciaga claimed that it never approved the usage of the said document in its ad photoshoot and as such the ‘inclusion of these unapproved documents was the result of reckless negligence’.

The impugned photo was published concurrently as another Balenciaga advertising campaign – for the Gift Shop collection. The advertisement campaign, although produced by another company, played out a similar theme, id est the sexualisation of children in advertisement.

The Gift Shop collection featured images of children, posing with teddy bears in bondage-style garb while fetish fashion items carefully laid out in front of the children. The campaign came under global condemnation for sexualizing young children.

It must be highlighted that the multicolored plush teddy-bear handbags in sexual costumes, themselves are designed and marketed for Balenciaga’s Summer 2023 collection.

Balenciaga’s president cum CEO Cédric Charbit, has since issued a public apology, so did the campaign photographer, Gabriele Galimberti and the brand’s creative director, Demna Gvasalia also issued his statement that basically blames the whole kerfuffle on ‘wrong artistic choice’.

The Balenciaga controversy not only highlighted the danger of allowing high-end fashion brands to reign the free market freely but also how capitalism without proper check and balance corrupts society absolutely. In this scandal, Balenciaga is not the only luxury brand that is found to be morally bankrupt, but others associated with it came tumbling down too.

For example, concerned netizens were quick to make the link between the Gift Shop campaign and its photographer Chris Maggio, who often worked closely with Balenciaga’s stylist Lotta Volkova including in a campaign published in Double, a fashion magazine that describes itself as ‘transversal’ but mostly explicit. In one of its series, Double displayed on its front cover, a singular female bare breast photo captured by German photographer, Juergen Teller, another known collaborator of Balenciaga.

In a thread that has since been deleted, Twitter user @curioslight compiled Lotta Volkova’s propensity in publicly sharing disturbing images depicting children in uncomfortable situations.

Added to this exposure, over the weekend, Dominique Samuels, a correspondent with BBC called out Balenciaga's parent company, Kering’s CEO François-Henri Pinault for a sale on Christie, the world renown auction house, owned under his other holdings - Groupe Artémis – to sell mannequins of naked children, a number of whom are conjoined, some of them with severed heads and other physically explicit monstrosity.

The history of high-end fashion is laden with sexual depravity.

In fact, Balenciaga’s recent debacle is a reminder of the network of sexual abuses perpetrated by Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modelling scout and supported by Jeffrey Epstein, the internationally notorious sex offender. In 2020, Brunel was arrested on suspicion of trafficking and raping underage girls.

Brunel’s modelling agency, MC2 Model Management purportedly was engaged by brand-names such as Nordstrom, Macy’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, J.C. Penney, Kohl’s, Target, Sears, and Belk.

With so many links that tied the fashion industry’s biggest names in support of a systemic promotion of child sexualisation, can the industry plead innocence?

Accepting chronophilia as a sexual identity

While fourth wave feminism seemed to have freed so many to publicly identify themselves with their preferred sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, this identity politics has also dragged the safety of children into question.

Acknowledging the societal rejection of paedophilia, paedophiles are making slow progress not to be called as such but rather as ‘Child Lovers’ or as even the more politically-correct terminology ‘Minor-Attracted Persons’ (or in short as MAPs).

With these new terms that sound more decent and less opprobrious, they are seeking acceptance from the society.

Many have also expressed wishes to be correctly categorised.

To them, there seems to be a moral contrast between a person who is i) an infantophile, one who has sexual preference for children less than 5 years old with ii) a paedophile, a person who has sexual attraction to prepubescent children, that is different from iii) hebephile who is sexually attracted to pubescent children who are in early adolescence and to iv) ephebophile who has sexual preference for mid-to-late adolescents.

While the power-that-be within the LGBTQA+ community that decides on who’s in and who’s out are still out on the acceptance of paedophiles into their coalition, there are movements within the community to expand the definition and experiences of gay movement to include MAPs. This move has been vehemently objected to by the community members.

In 2013, Russia introduced ‘gay propaganda’ ban, to protect children from ‘propaganda’ of any depiction or discussion of non-heterosexual relations.

In June 2021, Hungary’s parliament adopted legislation that would increase sentences for sex crimes against children, which also included restrictions against showing or ‘popularizing’ homosexuality contents that promote a gender that diverges from the binary biological sexes.

Recently, Russia further enhances its ‘gay propaganda’ ban to isolate children from any information on alternative sexual orientation and gender identity, including gender transition.

While Malaysian government has not initiated any discussion to similarly adopt such bans on gay-propaganda contents, it must be borne in mind that Malaysia has a strict legal framework protecting the safety of children from abuses including from sexual exploitation.

Under Section 31 of the Child Act 2001 [Act 611], any guardian of a child who sexually abuses the child or causes or permits him to be so abused commits an offence that is punishable with a fine not exceeding RM50,000 or imprisonment for a terms not exceeding 20 years upon conviction.

This provision must be read in line with provisions under the Penal Code. Section 375 permanently prohibits any sexual relations with any person below the age of 16 years. Under Section 376 of the Penal Code, different considerations are given when the court metes out punishment in a rape case.

Where the rape is done onto a person under the age of 16 years, if the sexual relations is without her consent, or if the sexual relations is done with a child under 12 years of age, with or without her consent, the person shall be punished with imprisonment for a term of not less than 10 years and not more than 30 years and shall also be liable to whipping.

Section 377E of the Penal Code also provides that ‘any person who incites a child under 14 years old to any act of gross indecency with him or another person shall be punished with imprisonment for a term of not less than three years and not more than 15 years, and shall also be liable to whipping.

All of these provisions must also be read together with the provisions under the Sexual Offences Against Children Act 2017 [Act 792], which criminalizes sexual grooming and any form of sexual assault of a child. Act 792 also makes any act of making, producing, directing, exchanging, publishing, selling, possessing and accessing child pornography as criminal offences.

Recent local developments

The president of WAFIQ, Prof. Dr. Rafidah Hanim Mokhtar in June of last year had lodged a police report against a social media influencer, who happens to be a transgender for sexually communicating with a child via Instagram live. In March of this year, the said influencer was charged with Sections 11(1)(a) and 15(a)(i) of Act 792.

Earlier this week, ACP Siti Kamsiah Hassan, principal assistant director of the D11 unit of the Royal Malaysian Police confirmed that the force recorded 2,066 reports of missing children in the three-year span from 2020 to March of this year. Majority of these cases involved teenagers who ran away from home to either follow their friends or lovers.

Bearing these harrowing statistics in mind, parents of teenage children must take stricter precautionary steps to ensure their children do not fall for predatory tactics used by possible paedophiles to ensnare their underage victims.

The seriousness of the public machineries deployed to combat sexual exploitation of children must be matched with social controls within our Malaysian communities. Sadly, many parents are still nonchalant to the issue.

Recently, a post depicting a child model wearing heavy make ups while donning tight clothing and high heels while strutting the runways at a fashion show made its circulation on social media. Search on her account showed pictures of her modelling in a bare-midriff shirt, laced tight dresses and high split dresses.

While we appreciate and celebrate a child’s bravery and confidence to express themselves in applying experiential learning, it scares us to think how easily children are exploited within the fashion industry.

As such, we beseech parents to be more vigilant of ensuring their children’s safety and protect their privacy.

The legal framework put in place to protect children is meaningless if parents themselves allow their children to be exploited by the system that is designed to manipulate and circumvent the safeguards put in place.

Fatihah Jamhari is Vice President II cum Head Human Rights Bureau of the International Women’s Alliance for Family Institution and Quality Education (WAFIQ).

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of Sinar Daily.