KUALA LUMPUR, July 8 — Research is lacking on possible causality between parental neglect of children and the rising incidence of juvenile crimes, Women, Family and Community Development Deputy Minister Hannah Yeoh said today.
Commenting on the recent rape and murder cases involving juveniles, Yeoh said it was difficult to gauge the effectiveness of awareness programmes or plan these when there was not enough data collected to offer plausible conclusions.
“We don’t have enough study on such cases, on how many per cent of the increase are coming from neglected family. It is a vicious cycle.
“So if we don’t have the data, we don’t have intervention and then whatever programmes we have is not going to work,” Yeoh said at the lobby of Parliament today.
She added that such data was crucial as punitive measures alone were not the answer in cases where both the perpetrator and victim were minors.
Instead, she said other factors such as causality and mitigation must also be determined.
“There is a reason why children behave like that and we have to look at firstly, the enforcement and the existing laws. Charge the adults who had neglected the children that had resulted in this.
“Secondly is looking at rehabilitation, you have to focus on recovery,” she said.
Yeoh also said attention should be given to the deterioration of the family unit in Malaysia as there was growing incidence of intra-family crime.
The deputy minister said such issues would not be addressed until effort is made to resolve fundamental issues in familial units, such as a lack of communication and under parenting.
Yesterday, two teenagers were arrested after they confessed to involvement in the murder of a Form Four student in Taiping, Perak.
The 16-year-old boy was reportedly killed by his 14-year-old sister and her boyfriend, 15, over a dispute.
Separately, a 12-year-old boy in Batu Gajah, Johor admitted last week to raping a four-year-old girl in the care of his mother, who is a babysitter.
The Year Six pupil had raped the toddler three times since May and was purportedly influenced by pornographic videos he viewed on a mobile phone.
