Vest: Macedonian Criminal Code undergoes changes

As recent article in Vest Newspaper announces, the Ministry of Justice in Macedonia has proposed changes concerning child abuse to be made in Criminal Code. Amendments are the Government's response to the ongoing rise in the cases of sexual assaults of children.

The current prescribed sentence of 1 - 5 years of imprisonment for mediating child prostitution was raised to 5 -10 years. The sentence of 1 year of imprisonment for making profit from child prostitution was increased to 3-5 years of imprisonment.

Furthermore, the lowest sentence of 4 years of imprisonment for sexual assault of a child, from now on should not be less than 8 years. The sentence is also doubled, reaching 10 years, if the act was perpetrated by a parent, teacher, or adopter.

The regulations remained unchanged for the sentence from 10 years to life imprisonment for sexual assault of a child, in cases when the victim received severe injuries and long-term consequences, the sexual assault over a child was conducted by a group of people or the act led to death of the child.

The immediate changes were proposed after the session of the Government that took place three weeks ago, when the Ministry of Justice was obliged to conduct a survey on the relations between the prosecutors and the judges in the investigation and court procedures against child abusers. The Government also demanded information on how the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy is taking care of the children victims of paedophilia and whether the parents who neglected their children or allowed them to go into prostitution were deprived of their parental rights.

The Ministry of Justice was also asked to provide accurate data of the number of cases in which the prosecutors in investigation procedures demanded the punitive measure of custody for perpetrators of physical assault of children and the investigation judges did not approve of their request. Another obligation was to submit accurate data from the Public Prosecutor's Office on the number of probations and low sentences passed by the judges to paedophiles, on which the prosecutors never appealed.

According to the Government, the Minister of Justice of Republic of Macedonia Mr. Mihajlo Manevski was obliged to prepare even more rigorous punishments for sexual assaults of children then those done recently, and introduce life imprisonment for paedophiles. Sentences for paedophiles have become drastically rigorous and have been enforced since 15th January 2008, however, the judges still stick to the minimum, rather than the prescribed maximum sentences.

Journalist: S.K.Delevska

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