Penalties for sexual offences to become more severe in The Bahamas

By Melissa Bryant
Reporter~SKNVibes.com

~~Adz:Left~~ NASSAU, Bahamas – PROPOSED amendments to the Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Act aim to stiffen the penalty for serious sexual offences to life imprisonment and to introduce the offences of voyeurism and electronic procuration.

According to Caribbean Net News, persons convicted of producing child pornography, rape, incest, unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, unlawful sexual intercourse with a person suffering from a mental disorder, and having sexual intercourse with a minor of the same sex would be subject to life imprisonment.

According to Minister of Youth Desmond Bannister, “Persons who invade the privacy of others, who sneakily take a photograph or make a video recording of others in circumstances where the person being recorded or photographed would have had a reasonable expectation of privacy, commit an offence and can face the sanction of the law.”~~Adz:Right~~

The Bill also makes it an offence for persons to print, copy, publish, distribute, circulate, sell or make such a recording available by some other means if he or she knows that the person who made the recording in the first place did so in breach of the law.

The offence of procuration in the Bill has been amended to include procuration by electronic means, while persons who have sexual intercourse with children less than 14 years of age face a term of life imprisonment, while previously the Bill mandated that persons in violation of this law were charged with seven years imprisonment for the first offence and 14 years incarceration for the second.

This change also applies to the administration of date rape drugs, where a person administers drugs or other substances to another person in order to overpower and take advantage of them for the purpose of having sexual intercourse.

“Predators will no longer get a second chance. One of the government’s most fundamental responsibilities is to ensure that laws are enacted to protect those who are subject to victimisation by others.

“I cannot think of a group that is more vulnerable and more deserving of protection than our women and who may be subjected to sexual abuse, and this government takes its duty to protect Bahamians from sexual predators very seriously,” said Bannister.