News / National
12-year-old Zimbabwean girls CAN consent to sex and marriage
19 Jun 2015 at 03:00hrs | Views
Prosecutor General Johannes Tomana has ruled that all 12 year old girls are free to engage in sex and be married.
Tomana also defended the courts for refusing to jail child sex predators who can prove that there was "consent".
Zimbabwe's age of consent is 16.
Zimbabwe's top prosecutor says he also finds no problem with child molesters who escape with community service sentences serving their punishment at schools - with potentially hundreds more victims.
Tomana's extraordinary intervention came after MPs and children's rights advocates demanded legislative reforms to enhance legal protection for children under the age of 16, with the courts increasingly accepting that children between 12 and 16 are capable of giving consent to sex.
"If young girls were to be asked what they prefer, most would say they should be allowed to engage in sex after turning 12, Tomana claimed.
"It's assumed that the girl child's independent decisions start at an age that those that are speaking want to fix, but if you go out there you'll find out that some of them may want to start out in life early," the Prosecutor General said, speaking on Wednesday during a visit to Bulawayo.
"If you look at it, we don't have a framework for example, where we can guarantee that all our girl children are usefully engaged before they actually get above 18 years, we don't have that," he explained.
"We've nine-year-olds, 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds who're actually not in school, who're not doing anything for example. What are we saying to them? We say you can't even do this [have sex], when the environment is not giving them alternative engagements? What are we talking about?
Tomana also defended the courts for refusing to jail child sex predators who can prove that there was "consent".
Zimbabwe's age of consent is 16.
Zimbabwe's top prosecutor says he also finds no problem with child molesters who escape with community service sentences serving their punishment at schools - with potentially hundreds more victims.
Tomana's extraordinary intervention came after MPs and children's rights advocates demanded legislative reforms to enhance legal protection for children under the age of 16, with the courts increasingly accepting that children between 12 and 16 are capable of giving consent to sex.
"If young girls were to be asked what they prefer, most would say they should be allowed to engage in sex after turning 12, Tomana claimed.
"It's assumed that the girl child's independent decisions start at an age that those that are speaking want to fix, but if you go out there you'll find out that some of them may want to start out in life early," the Prosecutor General said, speaking on Wednesday during a visit to Bulawayo.
"If you look at it, we don't have a framework for example, where we can guarantee that all our girl children are usefully engaged before they actually get above 18 years, we don't have that," he explained.
"We've nine-year-olds, 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds who're actually not in school, who're not doing anything for example. What are we saying to them? We say you can't even do this [have sex], when the environment is not giving them alternative engagements? What are we talking about?
Source - chronicle
