Children’s Advocate Mary Clarke has urged the committee considering the Offences Against the Persons Act to treat with caution suggestions that the age of consent be increased from 16 to 18 years.

The children’s advocate, who was responding to the latest suggestion from Commissioner of Corrections Major Richard Reese that the age be increased, argued that the legislation should seek to protect children and not “increase criminalisation of children”.

According to Clarke, while her personal stance was that teenagers should wait until maturity before initiation, moving the age of consent posed further danger.

“The information we are getting is that teenagers are hiding from well-needed treatment because of the age of consent; there have been reports of them not going to the clinics when they need to because they are afraid of what will happen to their partners,” Clarke told the committee on Thursday.

“We have to look carefully at the age of consent and the extent to which we are going to criminalise,” Clarke said. “Victims become secondary victims when they fear to access necessary treatment,” she added.

Reese, in his submission to the committee, argued that the age of consent be raised to 18 years as “at the age of 16 a child is still economically dependent on his parents”.

According to Reese, raising the age would help children to postpone their early sexual involvement and focus on preparation for adulthood.

Second vice-president of the Press Association of Jamaica Hylton Dennis also objected strongly to Reese’s suggestion, arguing that with the country’s penal institutions now ‘bursting at their seams’, asking for the age of consent to be increased would be “increasing the likelihood for more offenders to be brought to book”.

“Where will you put the additional offenders if you ask for those changes?” Hylton asked.

In the meantime, Reese said his department was in support of the decision to abolish the common-law presumption that a child up to the age of 14 years was incapable of committing rape and other sexual offences, under the Incest (Punishment) Act, which is being considered jointly with the Offences Against the Persons Act.

He said: “When one looks at the trend within our society we observe an alarming increase of child perpetrators who have committed sexual offences. It is our duty therefore to arrest the problem by instituting the appropriate laws and sanctions,” Reese told the House committee.

Noting that young persons between the ages of 12 and 14 years were involved in gang rape/battery of persons which sometimes occurs in schools and communities, Reese said it was felt that the majority of the children in this age group were sexually aware and understood the consequences of their actions.

“From the Department of Correctional Service’s perspective we feel that the age difference is not the issue but the treatment that should be applied,” he told the committee.

Reese’s view, however, was once again at odds with that of the children’s advocate who has argued that the presumption should be kept.

“We believe that there should be some discretionary powers depending on the maturity and the responsibility of the child of that age group, but we would support the commissioner that we need to look seriously at the treatment,” Clarke said.

Noting the importance of the issue, the attorney general and chair of the committee, Senator A J Nicholson, recommended that both parties discuss the matter noting that the way to resolve the issue was to address the treatment.

In the meantime, the commissioner said a formal treatment regime for sex offenders was being designed with assistance from a Canadian counterpart which would take about eight months to be implemented.

Major Reese said there were 474 adult male sex offenders representing 10 per cent of the adult population in the penal system. Noting that there was currently a database of sex offenders covering a 10-year period, he advised that the reoffending rate was now being evaluated while a database for children was to be established, so trends there could also be monitored.

Among the recommendations forwarded to the committee by the prisons boss was that a sex offenders’ registry be established for monitoring and treatment purposes.

The proposed reforms to the Offences Against the Persons Act include providing a statutory definition of rape and sexual intercourse, extending ‘rape’ beyond vaginal penetration by a penis. In addition the offence of rape will become gender-neutral, meaning it can now be committed by a male or female against both male and female. It will also address the thorny issue of marital rape and abolish the presumption that a boy under the age of 14 years cannot be found guilty of rape on the grounds that boys do not attain puberty until age 14.

The main areas of change for the Incest Punishment Act will be to create a single, gender-neutral incest offence by persons of 16 years and older, and broaden the scope of persons who can be found guilty of the offence to include, among others, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces and persons in loco parentis relationships (persons, not parents, in parental-type relationships with children). It also provides for the re-classification of the offence of incest as a felony, with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment (as is the case for rape).