IT CAN’T: NATION TELLS TOMANA…PG backlash over child sex consent Johannes Tomana

tomana
Auxilia Katongomara Chronicle Reporter—

ZIMBABWE reacted with shock yesterday after Prosecutor General Johannes Tomana, in an interview with The Chronicle, appeared to suggest girls as young as 12 could get married, if they are shown to be consenting. The country’s top prosecutor said girls between 12 and 16 “can make a real conscious decision about what they want about their own life and when you establish that, there’s no need to go all the way to punish the other person [sex abuser].”

Tsholotsho North MP Professor Jonathan Moyo was most scathing, saying Tomana’s comments were bitterly disappointing.

“How can a kid who can’t drive a car have a sex drive? The bottom line is that children can’t consent to any sex whatsoever,” Prof Moyo told The Chronicle in an interview.

“Tomana’s view that 12-year-olds can consent to sex is outrageous and compromises his office,” he added on Twitter.

Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, speaking in Gweru at the 2015 Global Action Week for the Right to Education, said: “The government deplores early marriages, it deplores teenage pregnancies. The government has and continues to frown upon such practices. The business of children is in school, not in houses as housewives or teen husbands.”

Social media went into meltdown too, with many expressing outrage at what appeared to be the Prosecutor General’s condonation of sex with children as young as 12.

“I’m in a state of shock over the 12-year-old approach,” said former Deputy Justice Minister Fortune Chasi.

David Coltart, the former Education Minister, said the comments by the Prosecutor General would delight child sex predators.

“Tomana’s comments show that the girl child can expect very little sympathy in our prosecutorial system, and predatory men the opposite,” he said.

“I’m profoundly shocked by some of Prosecutor General Tomana’s comments regarding 12-year-old girls and their sexuality.”

Lawyer Alex Magaisa, writing in The Chronicle today, blasted: “The entire interview was outrageous and his views were scandalous. It’s hard to see how a man occupying such a senior role in the justice system, and with the responsibility to protect children, could hold such parochial and medieval views on a matter of such gravity.”

Yesterday, Tomana was backpedalling furiously, even suggesting that The Chronicle had criminally misrepresented what he said.

This newspaper, he said, “is supposed to protect government institutions… it’s supposed to protect the Prosecutor General.”

“If I stated the law like that, it’s the obligation of the paper to communicate it like that because that’s what the people must understand. Now, if you choose to tell the people the opposite, then that will make the people hate me for not understanding the law and their morals when you’re actually factually also wrong,” he said.

“Why would you do that if you’re not undermining the institution? Why would you do that when you’re not committing a crime? And that’s why the law for criminal defamation is necessary to deal with this type of behaviour.”

The Chronicle is not making apologies to Tomana, editor Mduduzi Mathuthu said last night.

He said: “We respect government institutions and my reporters who interviewed Mr Tomana tell me he’s a jolly good fellow, so there’s no bad blood here. But I challenge anyone to read the transcript of what Mr Tomana said, and go on the websites of both The Chronicle and The Herald and listen to what he had to say, and tell me where or how we’ve criminally misrepresented him.

“I want to agree with the blogger Larry Kwirirayi when he says ‘what Tomana said and what he meant to say are two different things. He argued himself down a rabbit hole.’ Our job, unfortunately, is not to ‘protect’ him from himself.

“I pray that he’ll reflect on this and come to the conclusion that he has said some pretty awful things which are antediluvian and don’t advance the cause of the girl child. Instead of complaining, Mr Tomana can do a world of good by getting his prosecutors to appeal all non-custodial sentences for child molesters and push for law reforms so that the age of consent, which is currently 16, is really 16.”

The Prosecutor General, speaking on a visit to Bulawayo on Wednesday, dropped a series of clangers as he sought to defend the soft sentencing of child sex predators.

“It’s assumed that the girl child’s independent decisions start at an age that those that are speaking want to fix [16], but if you go out there you’ll find out that some of them may want to start out [having sex] in life early,” he said in the recorded comments, now available on our website.

Here is a selection of his comments: “We’ve nine-year-olds, 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds who’re 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?”

“If we educate our girl child universally up to, for example, where they get to the age of 18 in an environment where you guarantee that they’re not abused, then we are talking. But to simply say ‘no such and such conduct for any girl say below the age of 16’, I think we’ve not asked ourselves what we’re saying about that girl who would rather prefer to lead their life in the direction of getting married.”

“In some cases, if you talk to our prosecutors, the experience is that you find that she would actually demonstrate to you that you’re destroying their life and demand you let that guy go because it’s her own will, she wants to get married to that person. You’ll also find out that person also wants to get married to the girl. Is it not better to allow them to get married than send this one to jail after she has already been violated, for example, and send her back to society that would not actually look at her as a pure person anymore. Is that better?”

“I want to say they’re very sensible people and I know girls develop faster than boys and they mature faster than boys. Are we saying we should continue talking on their behalf when they’re there? Do we just change these laws to suit ourselves and our dreams that have nothing to do with addressing the real conditions that they live in?”

On sending convicted paedophiles to perform community service at schools: “I think let’s look at it from the point of view that this is a punishment that’s serving its purpose because is there any record that if we make them mop in any school they pose any harm? Remember, when we punish people, we also expect to rehabilitate them, do you know that? They’re supposed to be rehabilitated, which means brought back to society and fit into the society as well. So I don’t see any harm in that.”

The comments above, Tomana told our Harare Bureau yesterday, were just a mere interpretation of “the law as it stands”.

“The law as it stands, and this is what I explained to The Chronicle . . . If the girl is below the age of 12, whether she agreed, whether she consented or whether you had the so-called affair, which can be established, you will be treated like a rapist. This is the law and I’m supposed to speak about it the way it is in the books and it’s not about what I think,” he said.

“Then I said, above the age of 12 to the age of 16, if you knew that they were between the age of 12 and 16 and you slept with them knowing that, the fact that you were going out with her and had a relationship, in the eyes of the law will not matter but not to the extent of the below 12.

“It’s only to the extent that morally we say it’s wrong and we have all agreed by law that it’s wrong and it should be punished but it’s not punished like rape that is why you find that the one who’s charged is sentenced to statutory rape and is not sentenced to the rape-years because they are taking into account that this girl was in agreement, this girl was not ravaged; it was consensual. But we are saying it’s wrong to sleep with a girl who is below the age of 16 that’s why they are not punished as much as those that sleep with the one who is below the age of 12. That is the law.

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