Sex crimes involving relatives on the rise: expert

But the rise in sex crimes involving family members is high, said Nittaya Phiriyaphongphan, a senior Women and Men Progressive Movement Foundation official, citing an 11 percent increase of cases involving male violators and young female victims. The tendency of victims’ ages becoming younger is another worry, she added.
In certain cases, a victim had been violated by three brothers for three years since she was nine, and many cases involving violators who were victims’ grandfathers, fathers, stepfathers, and brothers. Another 38 per cent of the cases reported to police are violations by neighbours, associates, acquaintances and colleagues.
“The youngest victim is reportedly at five months by a violator at 13, and the oldest is a 89yearold by a 14yearold, who said he was made aroused after watching a porn movie  which are shocking,” she said.
WMPMF director Jadej Chaowilai, said male chauvinism needed to be altered or given up among males through selfconscience or motivation if not education and upbringing by concerned parents, while the law needed to make other sex acts culpable and punishable  not just insertion in penis into vagina which defines rape in the Criminal Code’s Article 276.
The other key factor attirbuting to rape and other sex crimes is the violators’ drinking at 39 per cent of cases reported to police, while the other factors are lack of the violators’ selfrestraint, assault and mugging followed by sex crimes, use of drugs or addictive substances, jealousy and arousal caused by watching porn or provocative materials.
The head of a lesbian group, Anchana Suwannanont, said an amendment to Article 276 was needed to include all sex acts against the recipients’ will, including the use of sex toy or other objects into all entries of the victims, not just the insertion to define rape. The word “against women who are not violators’ wives” must also be omitted, in order that the altered Article 276 could protect all women, she added.
A lawyer with WMPMF, Arunsri Meewongtham, said the sex crimes had increased by 20 to 30 per cent each year, and been reported to her foundation at 20 cases a month. She called on victims to see doctors for examination before cleansing their bodies, while calling for an education to the public to tell women of what they would do after ensuring the crimes before the cleanup.
More female police interrogators are needed at police stations for interviewing victims, while male interrogators should be taught better interviewing techniques or need to self motivate themselves to be careful about the victims’ feelling in order that they did not “rerape” the victims, she said.