KUALA LUMPUR, June 15 ― Most paedophile victims are familiar with their attackers, a welfare group said when drawing comparisons to Briton Richard Huckle who posed as an aid worker to gain access to his Malaysian victims.
Malacca Barisan Nasional social service centre (Pembela) director Amir Hamzah Aziz said the pattern of abuses here had similarities with Huckle's case, in which victims fell prey because they trusted their abusers.
“The perpetrators gained their victims’ trust by being nice and friendly. I do not want to say too much to protect the children,” he was quoted as saying by The Star newspaper.
“But I can say that the pattern of sexual abuses were similar to that of Richard Huckle.”
Huckle was sentenced to 22 life terms in the UK for raping and abusing 23 children, who were mostly Malaysians aged from six months to 11 years old between March 2006 and December 2014.
He was also reported to have documented the assaults and possessed more than 20,000 indecent images on his computer and camera.
Amir Hamzah said Pembela handled about five paedophile cases a year that were referred to the police, the most recent involving a civil servant who knew the victims before violating them.
“There was also a case where a 14-year-old became pregnant after she was raped by someone she knew,” he said.
Malacca has had two cases of child sexual abuse in then span of eight months.
In March, Malacca police detained a school teacher after a pupil lodged a complaint that the 28-year-old performed oral sex on her and a friend when they were staying at a hotel in Ayer Keroh here last October.
The two pupils had represented their school rugby team at a national tournament and the teacher allegedly entered their room and sexually abused them.
In August last year, two primary school girls in Jasin accused their teacher sexually abusing them during a co-curriculum activity.
The 11-year-old students alleged that the incident occurred while they were arranging sports equipment at the school store.
