Magistrate for Mlowe Court in Rumphi, Chikumbutso Kachipande, said on Friday that unless Malawi\u2019s Penal Code undergoes serious review, the country may never win the fight against cases of girl child abuses.<\/p>\n
She said the lenient sentences stipulated in the current code hinder magistrates from melting out stiffer ones to convicts since they are bound by the law.<\/p>\n
Giving out an example of a K750, 000 fine which is imposed on a first offender-child defiler Kachipande said is affordable and no longer acts as a deterrent to would-be offenders due to the dwindling value of the kwacha.<\/p>\n
\u201cMillions of stakeholders can intervene to curb the vice, but all that is in vain if the weak legislation is maintained because at the end of the day cases have to end up in court. So as a country let\u2019s work on our law,\u201d Kachipande observed during an open day aimed at raising awareness on issues of child abuse in the area of Inkosi Mtwalo.<\/p>\n
She then disclosed that in a month, she presides over an average of 10 cases of child abuse which she decried that some of them end prematurely after being withdrawn by spouses to the suspects.<\/p>\n
\u201cMen take advantage of the vulnerability of their women, because af ter committing an offence like defilement or molestation they know that women will come crying their heart out for their acquittal since they are the sole breadwinners in the home, this also is a serious challenge,\u201d Kachipande explained.<\/p>\n
In her remarks, Primary Education Advisor for Jombo Zone, Agness Msiska, said the area lacks vibrant by-laws to put the situation in check at grass root level.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cWe do not have by-laws which can be enforced at community level. And since most chiefs are in the lead of marrying young girls or pushing them into early marriages I do not see us having them soon. Otherwise local leaders are supposed to be at the helm of enforcing those laws.\u201d<\/p>\n
Section 368 of the Penal Code however, stipulates a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for anyone convicted of defiling a child<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Magistrate for Mlowe Court in Rumphi, Chikumbutso Kachipande, said on Friday that unless Malawi\u2019s Penal Code undergoes serious review, the country may never win the fight against cases of girl child abuses. She said the lenient sentences stipulated in the current code hinder magistrates from melting out stiffer ones to convicts since they are bound […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":27786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27782"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27787,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27782\/revisions\/27787"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}