IN Zambia, a girl below 16 years is a minor under the country’s law, meaning that it does not matter whether she agrees to have an intimate relationship with a man or woman, the adult will be deemed to have committed a criminal offence.
Having an intimate sexual relationship with a girl aged 16 and below is, simply put, defilement, a criminal act.
Defilement, on a wider scale, is an act of great disrespect. In biblical times, this was referred to as a sin against God, a sin against sacred places or ideas.
This was particularly common in centuries-old England when the Christian monasteries in Great Britain suffered ‘defilement” at the hands of Viking invaders.
When you defile something, it literally means that you make it impure.
Defilement – having sexual intercourse with a minor – as we commonly know it, has for years been a big problem in Zambia.
And, without doubt, it continues to be one of those incessant forms of child abuse often reported about in the media nearly everyday.
Only yesterday, readers were greeted by a front page story in this newspaper whose headline, in red, said ‘Choma girl (15) defiled’.
In this grisly incident, three unknown men in the Southern Province central town defiled a 15-year-old girl, leaving her with severe injuries on her private parts, according to provincial deputy police commissioner Alfred Nawa.
Appended to the same story was yet another sad incident of a 12-year-old girl of Chief Monze’s area who was allegedly defiled by a man who has since been arrested.
And the list of such incidents may go on. It must be assumed that more of such cases are yet to be reported.
Because of the prevalence of the problem, and in conformity with more modern methods of child care and protection, a local non-governmental organisation not too long ago urged the Zambian Parliament to amend the law relating to defilement.
The NGO suggested, in no uncertain terms, that parliamentarians must raise the age of consent from 18 to 21 years.
This came after an earlier call to stiffen punishment for such an offence by making 15 years the minimum jail sentence for offenders, which amendment has since been implemented.
The amendment to the clause, as well as the call to raise the age of consent, have come against the background of people’s serious concern for the physiological and emotional health of children who continue to be abused.
Girls are increasingly falling prey to lustful men and this is of concern, especially because of the HIV/AIDs pandemic which has been spreading in sub-Saharan Africa like bush fire.
Many men tend to pounce on young girls for sex in the belief that the younger the girl, the less the danger of catching AIDs.
In some cases, some ‘sick’ men have been fed with wrong information by witch-doctors whom they consult, that sleeping with a minor can cure their ailments.
Other wealth-seeking men have equally been told the same lie and have gone ahead to commit the heinous crime.
In a society where what people see as deterrent measures do not seem to deter defilers, more measures need to be explored to protect girls from the marauding sex maniacs.
But as these measures are yet to be found, we implore parents to closely guard their children or not to leave them under the care of anybody because even ‘trusted’ guardians have at some time turned out to be agents of the devil. OPINION