THERE has been a marked increase in sex crimes against children in Sarawak, said state Welfare, Women and Community Wellbeing Minister Fatimah Abdullah.

She said police statistics showed an increase of 41.81% in such cases in the first four months of the year from the number of cases   during the corresponding period last year, or 251 cases this year compared with 177 cases last year.

The statistics showed outraging modesty cases were up 125%, sodomy 100% and rape 24.32%, she told a forum on sexual crime against children in Kuching yesterday.

Fatimah said Sarawak also had the second highest teenage pregnancy cases in the country.

The Sarawak Health Department’s 2014 statistics showed that teenage pregnancies in the state were 24.2% higher than the national average, with the highest number of teenage pregnancies occurring in Sarikei, Kapit, oil and gas towns Bintulu and Miri, Kuching and Samarahan.

The minister also said that more often than not, teenage marriages ended in divorce in four to five years. 

The young brides were usually 12 to 15 years old, and such marriages usually occurred when the girls became pregnant, said Fatimah.

“It often happens the parents would ask the couple to get married. But based on our observation, this kind of marriage normally will not last,” she said 

What was disturbing, Fatimah said, was evidence linking domestic violence to marriage at a young age.

On a more positive note, she said child abuse cases had not risen while baby dumping declined from four cases to three this year. – May 5, 2017.