Compensation payment not the solution

Editorial

IT is time to enact laws preventing compensation payment from being used as settlement for any family and sexual violence offences committed.
Compensation payment is becoming a common trend agreed upon as a way of solving the issue outside the justice system.
In fact, compensation should never be seen as pardoning of the offence by the victim or his or her family because justice has been undermined.
Let the offender go through the justice system and be penalised accordingly – if found guilty.
Looking at the other side of the coin, lack of access to the courts and police, as well as the failure by many officials to take violence against women seriously, discourages victims from reporting their case.
Then people in rural areas opt for the traditional forms of justice to solve serious family and sexual violence cases.
Compensation, either in the form of money or pigs, is often paid to the victims’ families, allowing the perpetrators to go free to remain within their communities, exposing survivors to the threat of repeated violence.
But that aside, the request from Family Sexual Violence Unit coordinator Job Eremugo to the Constitutional Law Reforms Committee to come up with laws preventing the payment of compensation to the family of the victims of family and sexual violence must be supported.
That will be the only way to allow justice to take its course through the justice system.
Perpetrators must be held responsible for their actions and should have their day in court.
It is true that most often the case, relatives of the victims were the ones who wanted compensation to be paid so that they could have a share of it.
The law must also give the victims the right to speak up and reject compensation payments and pursue their cases through the courts until the perpetrators were punished.
How very true the point raised by Eremugo that traditionally, a bride price signified marriage.
But today, it has been subjected to abuse, too, with some husbands thinking that they own their wives and can do anything to them.
It must be stressed that bride price signifies marriage, but it does not give the right to the husband to own his wife.
The support now must be for law enforcement agencies to discourage the use of compensation in a bid to avoid prosecution for serious criminal charges.
We start off with police, they should not close cases simply because the victim’s relatives had withdrawn their charges after being paid compensation.
Lae Police boss Anthony Wagambie Jr earlier this year publicly told community leaders who were encouraging out-of-court settlements to stop the practice and refer sexual crimes to police.
All sexual offence cases should be referred to police and not dealt with elsewhere.
And those who entertain compensation and out-of-court settlements are as guilty as the offenders.
We support Wagambie on his stand that anyone found to be facilitating such activities must be arrested and charged.
The danger here is that the perpetrators of violent crimes can go unpunished if society deems compensation an acceptable form of justice.
The onus is on the police and law enforcement agencies not to accept compensation as a means to an end and see that justice is served whenever and wherever possible.
The law must be the only benchmark by which we measure ourselves and by which order and peace is maintained.