Hong Kong considers lowering sex offender age limit to 10 after rape

 Prosecutors in Hong Kong are considering a lower age limit for sex offenders after a 13-year-old boy who raped a young girl in a hospital last year was unable to be charged with rape, news reports said on Friday.

The disturbing assault took place in September last year at the Pamela Youde Eastern Hospital when the 13-year-old Korean boy pulled down a 5-year-old girl’s pants and raped her. Both children were patients in the children’s ward of the hospital.

Under current Hong Kong law, boys under the age of 14 cannot be charged with rape because the statutes presume they are physically incapable of sexual intercourse. It is a presumption which has existed for around 100 years, and is now being debated.

The boy in this case, who cannot be named, was sentenced to a reformatory school for at least one year on a charge of indecent assault, to which he pled guilty. But Eastern Juvenile Court magistrate Adriana Tse Ching said the punishment for the crime was “wholly inadequate” as prosecutors were unable to file rape charges.

“In mitigation, the defense said he is a newcomer and helpless in a new culture, yet no culture could accept such conduct,” Tse was cited as saying by the Hong Kong Standard newspaper.

A spokesman for the Security Bureau said it is studying a Law Reform Commission proposal that boys aged between 10 and 13 may be charged with rape, the newspaper said. It is unclear when a decision will be taken whether or not the law will be changed.

“The presumption [that a boy under 14 is incapable of sex] has existed for 100 years so children might not have been as sexually active back then,” said Stephen Hung Wan-shun, council member of the Law Society of Hong Kong, as cited by The Standard. “Things have changed since.”