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LETTER | To catch a predator, talk about the elephant in the room
LETTER | Did you know that the authorities recently uncovered more than 2.1 million child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and pornography files in an operation codenamed Ops Pedo 3.0? The third iteration of this operation by MCMC and the police exposed the sickening scale of CSAM-related video production in Malaysia.
To make matters worse, among those arrested in Ops Pedo 3.0, eight teens aged between 13 and 18 - seven boys and a girl - were caught for producing animated pornographic material and selling it on the dark web for as low as RM50. It made me wonder: where are these children learning this behaviour from?
When news broke last week of 16-year-old star student Irene Sofiya’s death, I caught videos of journalists speaking to her despondent father, Khairool Faisal, whose thousand-yard stare spoke a million words at her burial as he called for her justice. This was a man who had already lost his wife, and now his only daughter.
Living with her maternal grandparents, a young Irene harboured dreams of becoming a specialist doctor, following in the footsteps of her late mother. Her tragic death is unforgivable. My gut churned as the video played, and I wondered: when did our schools get so unsafe?
Let us not forget that not so long ago were the deaths of students Yap Shing Xuen in the toilets of SMK Bandar Utama Damansara (4), who was fatally stabbed by a schizophrenic schoolmate, and Zara Qairina Mahathir in Sabah, whose case remains unsolved.
Online, there were recent allegations that maths whiz kid-turned-predator Nur Fitri Azmeer Nordin had started work at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) - which it swiftly denied in a statement. In 2014, Nur Fitri was convicted and sentenced to jail in the United Kingdom for possessing more than 30,000 images of child sexual abuse material. Yet when he returned to Malaysia, he was "given a second chance" to finish his doctorate at the institution despite his inexcusable crime.
And on the other side of the world, a 2024 alleged gang-rape case involving seven men linked to its college fraternity called Chi Phi has unfolded at Cornell University. Their lightest punishment? To write essays reflecting on their actions.
Cornell, however, has denied that the essay-writing assignment was the only penalty offered by the institution to the defendants. I couldn’t help but wonder what lessons would these young men truly gain from that experience?
What message are we sending?
So, when I first caught wind of acclaimed documentary maker Lance Oppenheim’s feature debut Primetime (starring actor Robert Pattinson and singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers among others), I was looking forward to seeing how the skilled Oppenheim would set about tackling the movie’s controversial subject matter – paedophilia culture and child sexual abuse – topics so pertinent in Malaysia right now.
The movie is based on the hit American TV show To Catch A Predator, hosted by Chris Hansen. The premise of the show was that it was a high-stakes sting operation that targeted men suspected of soliciting sex with minors in online chat rooms.
Using a network of actors, they would lure unsuspecting predators back to fake homes, or “sting houses”, where the entrapment begins. Inside, they are filmed expressing their criminal intent, before Hansen would suddenly appear and confront these men.
The police then get involved, making arrests and taking these abusers away to be charged in court.
I was curious as to what conversations it could spark here in Malaysia, where child marriage is unfortunately still accepted by certain quarters. After all, art is often a catalyst for the layman to discover different perspectives on how to engage with the world around them.
So you can imagine my disappointment when I learnt that it would no longer be showing in Malaysia. In some ways, this week felt like the final straw for a person like me, who had been following the 24-hour cycle, seeing child after child attacked, groomed, raped, or killed.
It crossed my mind: What message are we trying to send through the banning of Primetime and the general inaction to tackle these issues with conviction?
Should we not talk about the elephant in the room, for fear of offending someone? Who exactly are we protecting when our children’s bodies lie lifeless in our schools and predators feed off and profit through their suffering?
Do we allow our children to be conditioned into thinking that sexual violence is normal; that paedophilia is normal; that grooming is normal? Do we allow these injustices to keep happening? The reality of the world we live in is so much worse than what is depicted on screen.
All-of-society approach
Responding to the Ops Pedo case, the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry shared that it is studying the need to expand provisions in proposed amendments to the Child Act 2001 on sexual misconduct involving children. This is with regard to predation and peer-to-peer grooming.
But we need more than closed-door talk and calls for policy reform; we need an all-of-society approach to work in tandem with it to end this pervasive violent and paedophilic culture endangering our youth, or we run the risk of giving free passes to abusers, absolving them of their crime.
The relevant ministries like the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry, helmed by Nancy Shukri, and the Education Ministry, helmed by Fadhlina Sidek, must act quickly and decisively to nip this worrying trend in the bud.
That said, the Film Censorship Board must also consider giving the arts room to challenge and provoke discussion on such topics. Let Primetime get its prime time in cinemas here.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
LETTER | Did you know that the authorities recently uncovered more than 2.1 million child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and pornography files in an operation codenamed Ops Pedo 3.0? The third iteration of this operation by MCMC and the police exposed the sickening scale of CSAM-related video production in Malaysia.
To make matters worse, among those arrested in Ops Pedo 3.0, eight teens aged between 13 and 18 - seven boys and a girl - were caught for producing animated pornographic material and selling it on the dark web for as low as RM50. It made me wonder: where are these children learning this behaviour from?
When news broke last week of 16-year-old star student Irene Sofiya’s death, I caught videos of journalists speaking to her despondent father, Khairool Faisal, whose thousand-yard stare spoke a million words at her burial as he called for her justice. This was a man who had already lost his wife, and now his only daughter.
Living with her maternal grandparents, a young Irene harboured dreams of becoming a specialist doctor, following in the footsteps of her late mother. Her tragic death is unforgivable. My gut churned as the video played, and I wondered: when did our schools get so unsafe?
Let us not forget that not so long ago were the deaths of students Yap Shing Xuen in the toilets of SMK Bandar Utama Damansara (4), who was fatally stabbed by a schizophrenic schoolmate, and Zara Qairina Mahathir in Sabah, whose case remains unsolved.
Online, there were recent allegations that maths whiz kid-turned-predator Nur Fitri Azmeer Nordin had started work at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) - which it swiftly denied in a statement. In 2014, Nur Fitri was convicted and sentenced to jail in the United Kingdom for possessing more than 30,000 images of child sexual abuse material. Yet when he returned to Malaysia, he was "given a second chance" to finish his doctorate at the institution despite his inexcusable crime.
And on the other side of the world, a 2024 alleged gang-rape case involving seven men linked to its college fraternity called Chi Phi has unfolded at Cornell University. Their lightest punishment? To write essays reflecting on their actions.
Cornell, however, has denied that the essay-writing assignment was the only penalty offered by the institution to the defendants. I couldn’t help but wonder what lessons would these young men truly gain from that experience?
What message are we sending?
So, when I first caught wind of acclaimed documentary maker Lance Oppenheim’s feature debut Primetime (starring actor Robert Pattinson and singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers among others), I was looking forward to seeing how the skilled Oppenheim would set about tackling the movie’s controversial subject matter – paedophilia culture and child sexual abuse – topics so pertinent in Malaysia right now.
The movie is based on the hit American TV show To Catch A Predator, hosted by Chris Hansen. The premise of the show was that it was a high-stakes sting operation that targeted men suspected of soliciting sex with minors in online chat rooms.
Using a network of actors, they would lure unsuspecting predators back to fake homes, or “sting houses”, where the entrapment begins. Inside, they are filmed expressing their criminal intent, before Hansen would suddenly appear and confront these men.
The police then get involved, making arrests and taking these abusers away to be charged in court.
I was curious as to what conversations it could spark here in Malaysia, where child marriage is unfortunately still accepted by certain quarters. After all, art is often a catalyst for the layman to discover different perspectives on how to engage with the world around them.
So you can imagine my disappointment when I learnt that it would no longer be showing in Malaysia. In some ways, this week, it felt like the final straw for a person like me, who had been following the 24-hour cycle, seeing child after child attacked, groomed, raped, or killed.
It crossed my mind: What message are we trying to send through the banning of Primetime and the general inaction to tackle these issues with conviction?
Should we not talk about the elephant in the room, for fear of offending someone? Who exactly are we protecting when our children’s bodies lie lifeless in our schools and predators feed off and profit through their suffering?
Do we allow our children to be conditioned into thinking that sexual violence is normal; that paedophilia is normal; that grooming is normal? Do we allow these injustices to keep happening? The reality of the world we live in is so much worse than what is depicted on screen.
All-of-society approach
Responding to the Ops Pedo case, the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry shared that it is studying the need to expand provisions in proposed amendments to the Child Act 2001 on sexual misconduct involving children. This is with regard to predation and peer-to-peer grooming.
But we need more than closed-door talk and calls for policy reform; we need an all-of-society approach to work in tandem with it to end this pervasive violent and paedophilic culture endangering our youth, or we run the risk of giving free passes to abusers, absolving them of their crime.
The relevant ministries like the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry, helmed by Nancy Shukri, and the Education Ministry, helmed by Fadhlina Sidek, must act quickly and decisively to nip this worrying trend in the bud.
That said, the Film Censorship Board must also consider giving the arts room to challenge and provoke discussion on such topics. Let Primetime get its prime time in cinemas here.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
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