State prosecutors should demand life imprisonment sentences for serious rape and sexual assault cases.
Speaking at the Office of the Director Public Prosecutions Annual Convention in Nadi this week, Division principal legal officer Unaisi Ratukalou said State prosecutors needed to be bold enough to ask for serious sentences that should deter future offenders.
“The norm is to stay within the tariffs or to ask of the maximum of the tariffs of 11 to 20 years for child rape or seven to 15 years for an adult rape,” Ms Ratukalou said.
“So, if 20 years is at the top then you ask for 17 or 18 years because we see that this issue is not going away and it is getting more gruesome.
“If the circumstances are fit, ask because that is what the court system is there for, to protect the child.
“When sexual offending happens to a child, you cannot take that away.”
She said sexual crimes left a permanent mark on survivors.
“You can lose property from theft or robbery but sexual crimes that are done to a person will live with you forever.
“So I would say there is no amount of imprisonment term that can take away that trauma from that child let alone their own daughter and when there is a domestic relationship between the accused and the child.”
Ms Ratukalou said a life imprisonment term was delivered this week to a father who raped his biological daughter for five years.
“He was a biological father who pleaded guilty.
“His daughter was between the age of five in kindergarten and aged nine when she was being raped.
“He would repeatedly rape her. He raped her and told her to perform oral sex on him.
“He would tell her if you don’t do this you won’t go to school or I won’t buy your school sandals.
“In some occasions, he would be doing that to her and her sister would be locked outside.
“So it happened within their home and he did that for five years. The only way the police found out was because the child went and told the teacher and she told the police that she was tired of the abuse that was happening.”
