KOTA KINABALU – Long jail terms handed to incest and rape offenders may not be an effective deterrent to others as educating children about sex, says a High Court judge here.

Justice Ian Chin said that although the courts had been meting out 18 to 20-year jail terms for such offences, they had not deterred other would-be offenders.

“One of the solutions lies in educating our children about what sex is and what is off limits, even to parents,” he said on Thursday when he upheld a 55-year jail term imposed by a Sessions Court against a farmer on four counts of raping three underaged girls, including his daughter, between 2000 and May last year.

Chin said that with education, girls would be taught to feel “repulsive and reject any attempt to violate their modesty let alone any intrusion into their bodies.”

In dismissing the 37-year-old farmer’s appeal, Justice Chin said that although he could not see the purpose of imposing such a long jail term, he would not alter the decision as the offences were committed at different times and against different individuals.

In July, Sessions Court judge Datuk Nurchaya Arshad ordered the farmer to be jailed 13 years and 10 months and be given six strokes of the cane on each count. The jail terms were to run consecutively.

In his appeal, the farmer’s counsel, Alex Lee, said the Sessions Court sentence was “excessive” and sought a concurrent jail term.

Story courtesy of www.thestar.com