Unlike in the current situation where defilement offenders in Rwanda evade justice 10 years after committing the crime, they will have to face legal action at any time in their lifetime if a proposal in the new bill amending the penal law is adopted by Parliament.
In the draft law amending the 2018 law determining offences and penalties in general, the government seeks, among other changes, to make the crime of child defilement imprescriptible.
Imprescriptible crimes are misconducts whose offenders can be prosecuted anytime regardless of lapsed time since the commission of the offence.
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Currently, defilement is among crimes – felonies – whose criminal action lapses after a period of 10 years.
In the explanatory note of the bill, the Government indicated that the crime of child defilement has been increasing and affecting Rwandan society, indicating that most of the time, offenders flee after committing the crime only to return when the time to initiate criminal action has elapsed.
In other cases, it added, sometimes the victims of this crime do not realise it is a crime, or they report it late because of the threats they have been given. By the time they realise and report it, prosecution of the offenders is not possible due to the fact that the prescriptive period elapsed.
In order to deter such crimes and remove challenges related to the prescriptive period, the draft law provides that the crime of child defilement is imprescriptible.
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"Sometimes the offender deceives the child or threatens to kill the child in case she/he discloses the case,” said the Minister of State in charge of Constitutional and Legal Affairs at the Ministry of Justice, Soline Nyirahabimana, as she gave some instances which make a child unable to report the criminal act.
"And a child comes to realise that it is a crime or disregards the threats when the period prescribed for the prosecution of the crime has lapsed. That is why we intend to make defilement an imprescriptible crime,” she observed.
Nyirahabimana made the observations on July 6, during the session in which the Parliamentary Committee on Political Affairs and Gender started scrutinising the above-mentioned bill amending the 2018 penal law.
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Justice for children
Speaking to The New Times, Jean-Paul Ibambe, a lawyer and Senior Capacity Development Officer at The Legal Aid Forum (LAF), said making defilement an imprescriptible crime implies a major development in terms of justice to the affected children, exposing that there are cases where offenders were ‘let off’ because the prescription period was over.
He said there are cases where The Legal Aid Forum has been helping women who seek legal support, and in the process of gathering evidence for acknowledgement of paternity so that the man in question fulfils the responsibility to take care of the child, it is discovered that he committed defilement.
"You would find someone who says there is a person who impregnated them but does not give them financial support to provide for the child. And, when you inquire about the case, you find that based on the child’s age, and that of the person in question (woman), she was indeed defiled because it (sexual intercourse) occurred when she was a child,” he said.
The Programme Manager at the Umbrella of Human Rights Organisations in Rwanda (CLADHO), Evariste Murwanashyaka, told The New Times, "Many people were defiling children and later escape in an attempt to evade justice – either outside of the country or in parts of the country that are distant from where they committed the crime – only to return when the cause for legal action was barred by prescription period.”
He indicated that making defilement a crime that won’t lapse with time could contribute to crime deterrence in the country.
"First, the development will render justice to the child victim of defilement, second it can contribute to reducing the number of people who commit such a crime because one might realise that they will one time be arrested even when they escape,” he said.
The activity report of the National Commission for Human Rights for the financial year 2021-2022 exposed that because of lack of evidence, thousands of defilement cases that the National Public Prosecution Authority (NPPA) received were not taken to courts for trial, thus, offenders are not punished.
It showed that in 2020-2021, NPPA received 5,278 cases of sex-based violence committed against children (aged below 18 years), but 2,271 or 43 per cent of the total, were not taken to courts.
According to the penal law enacted in 2018, a person convicted of child defilement is liable to imprisonment for a term of not less than 20 years and not more than 25 years – a child being any person who has not yet attained the age of consent which is 18 years. But, if child defilement is committed on a child under 14 years, the penalty is life imprisonment.